


heroes

by I_Failed_English_Lit



Category: Bourne (Movies), Bourne Series - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, My First Fanfic, No idea what I'm doing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, more than a little inspired by no country for old men, the intro is kinda pointless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-10-30 14:52:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10879098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Failed_English_Lit/pseuds/I_Failed_English_Lit
Summary: The job seemed too good to be true. That's because it was. Now the Seven are on the run from the CIA, a horde of mercenaries, and an assassin who seems way too good at his job.No Powers AU/Spy AU





	1. Cold Open

**Author's Note:**

> So . . . this is the first fanfic I've ever published. YAYY!! That said, in the future I will desperately need a beta, because nothing makes me cringe harder than my old work (even if its just a few seconds old). Also, don't get too attached to these characters in the intro. The demigods are coming along (sort of), don't ya'll worry!

Gideon put his flask back on his belt. A few feet away, Desmond was zipping his pants back up and Enzo let a string of French and Cantonese curse words fly past his lips as the Unimog’s engine gave another wheezing cough before spitting smoke into his face. It turned over once, twice, then slowly sputtered back to life.

“We good?” Gideon shouted over the cough of the engine. In response, Enzo slid into the driver’s seat and stepped on the accelerator. With a roar that echoed through the sweltering jungle, the car lurched forward, out of the tangle of roots that had kept it tied up for the past half hour.

Desmond nodded philosophically before spitting and sheathing his machete. Desmond stepped into the back of the vehicle with the cargo while Gideon sat shotgun with a semi-automatic cradled in his arms. The next ten minutes of driving passed painfully slowly while sweat that had nothing to do with the heat crept down Gideon’s forehead.

“Did you ever check what was in the case?” Enzo asked, finally cracking the oppressive silence.

“No,” Gideon spat shortly. “Does it matter?”

Enzo shrugged. “It’s a lot of money.”

“I know,” he replied. “That’s why we don’t ask questions.”

With the sun dipping into the horizon and the shadows stretching across the jungle floor, every tree seemed to be hiding an ambush, every dip in the road seemed to be a foxhole. Every time the car jolted, Gideon wondered if an IED had gone off.

“Shit,” Enzo suddenly announced. Ahead of them on the road, a tree had broken down and blocked the path. At the base of his skull, Gideon felt like a cat was using him as a scratching post.

“Stay in the car,” he ordered, unlocking his door and swinging it open. He began to take measured steps forward, his boots squelching in the moist soil. About five feet from the tree, he came to a halt. His eyes traced the line of the wood, down to the base of the trunk. Pacing to the crack, he flicked open a flashlight. Clean green wood shone under the small searchlight.

_New wood_ , he reflected, his mind jumping past unease into a state of slight panic. _They shouldn’t have fallen on their own_.

He heard a squelch of mud behind him.

Gideon leapt to the ground, spun around, and swung up his weapon in the direction of the noise.

Desmond raised his hands in mock surrender.

“Christ, man, chill the hell out.” He lowered his hands and strode over to where Gideon was kneeling, while in the car, Enzo watched them with clear confusion on his face.

Gideon roughly grabbed him and pushed him back. “That tree was cut down,” he growled, his voice low and full of warning. “We’re heading back.”

“But the mark -”

“If he can pay us $25 million,” Gideon snapped, glancing around at the trees surrounding them as he marched Desmond back to the car, “then he can damn well wait a few days until we can find a boat.”

Inside, Gideon’s head was buzzing with some premonition of danger. The job had always seemed too good to be true. “Just deliver the case,” the woman had promised. “You’ll get the money, just deliver the suitcase.”

No one wants $25 goddamned million for a suitcase unless it’s heavy shit. Gideon practically threw Desmond into the back of the truck and slid the flap shut. He ran back to the passenger side of the car, where the door was still open. Enzo looked up in surprise when Gideon started to climb in.

“But the tree-” he started.

Gideon cut him off. “Later!” he snapped with a wave of his hand. “Right now-”

There was a sharp crack, a clink of glass, and Enzo’s head snapped forward at Gideon. Something warm and wet sprayed all over Gideon’s face, and for a second he was confused why Enzo’s face was now covered in red.

"Fuck!” he roared, and ducked his head beneath the dashboard as the glass windows exploded inwards into slivers and darts. Peeking up for a second, he grabbed the steering wheel and reached with his leg until he was able to slam down on the reverse. The vehicle sprang backwards and as it accelerated, Gideon desperately tried to keep the car from driving off the road. He thought back desperately in his mind, trying to recall the contours of the path they had driven up on. _Straight_ , he thought, forcing himself to breathe slowly through his beard, _and then a sharp left_ -

The sudden lurch as the car tilted sideways at a crazy angle told him that he had guessed wrong. Gideon tried pushing on the accelerator. The car lurched for a second, but didn’t move. _Stuck in a ditch_ , he reflected and pushed Enzo’s body off of him. “Fuck!” he swore again as if making a prayer and knocked the door not stuck against the ground open so he could climb out. Outside, Desmond had already dragged himself into the open and reached out a hand for Gideon to grab.

“All right,” Gideon started as he pulled himself free, “we need to head out into the jungle. I think we’re about two days from an army camp, so just-”

The crackle of gunfire split that air and the two fell to the ground for cover. Gideon squeezed off a spray of bullets in the direction of the attack and was rewarded by a sudden yelp of pain.   _Good_ , he thought grimly and turned to Desmond.

Desmond had three red holes in his flak jacket and two in his face weeping blood.

Gideon hurriedly choked down bile rising in his throat and clawed his way to his feet. He could run off into the jungle, maybe make it out alive, but first . . .

He ran into the back of the truck looking for the briefcase. The devil had caused him more trouble than he’d ever had in his career before, but he’d be damned if he’d lose it now. It took him a minute to find it buried beneath a fallen stack of first aid supplies. After a second’s indecision, he grabbed a backpack and filled it with as many of those supplies as he could. He then clambered back outside.

The bullet took him between the eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as I said, I promise that the characters you know and love are coming along in a bit. Don't be discouraged by these randos!


	2. Rising Action

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Say hello to the actual characters! *blows air horn*  
> P.S. I don't actually speak Spanish, so Leo's words are just random nonsense floating in my brain.

_Turning and turning in the widening gyre_

_The falcon cannot hear the falconer;_

_Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;_

_Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,_

_The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere_

_The ceremony of innocence is drowned;_

_The best lack all conviction, while the worst_

_Are full of passionate intensity._

-William Butler Yeates, The Second Coming

**i.**

“Alexander Conklin has arrived,” came through on the intercom.

He leaned over to push the call button. “Let him in,” he intoned, and leaned back.

A moment later, Conklin pushed through the door into his office. “Director Abbot,” he greeted cautiously, clearly wary of the sudden meeting.

Ward Abbot nodded towards the hard plastic seat opposite from him across the cluttered desk. “Take a seat,” he requested. Conklin complied, though he looked no less concerned.

“This is about the fuckup in the Congo,” Abbot began shortly and quickly raised a hand as he saw Conklin open his mouth. “We’re not blaming you for anything, Conklin. That was Grace’s fuckup, pure and simple. Jupiter’s second one this month, if you’re counting.”

He knew for certain that Conklin had been counting the first and had probably been waiting for this one with bated breath. “You need someone to wipe up the spill.”

“Right.” Abbot nodded shortly. “The directors had a talk this morning. They want you to activate Treadstone. Not Bourne this time, but another asset. They seem to think you’re relying on him too much.”

Conklin took that in stride without reacting, but his fingers seemed to be twitching hopefully as if looking forward to the orders he would be sending. “I’m going to need mission details, of course, and-” He cut himself off as Abbot reached beneath the table and handed him a thick file folder.

“Not much to go on, I’m afraid. Grace hasn’t told us much yet, besides the fact that it was a data file. Probably just scared to tell us what it really is. We’re trying to pull him out of active operations to review his ass, but he’s stalling. He probably thinks he can clean this up quickly and get out of any major trouble.”

Conklin’s eyes glanced up from the files at that. “He’s still in the field?”

“Yes. You’ll be racing him for the files, as well as whoever ordered the job. That’s part of the mission, in case you didn’t know. You’ll need to get the files and find out whoever stole them, or who they work for.”

Conklin closed the folder with a snap and stood up. “Anything else?”

“You have two weeks at most,” Abbot warned as he peered over his wire-rimmed glasses, “before the CIA has to make a statement. If you don’t have the files by then, step back and let Grace take the shitstorm. Got it?”

“Don’t get caught in the blast. Got it.”

“And Conklin?” Conklin stopped at the door and looked back over his shoulder. “This is Treadstone’s only chance. Don’t fuck it up.”

-X-

He was sitting in the library when the message came. Quiet helped with the headaches, he had learned, and typed words, for whatever reason, did not give him any strain. The doctors had been thoroughly confused about why reading was not a trigger when bright, flashing lights were, but he did not particularly care about the why’s in this case. He preferred to rent out Study Room B, which was on the corner of the second floor. He could look up quickly and see everyone in the library through one of the two windows, and the other gave him a clear view of the outside. The window was also by the drive-by pickup window of the library, which jutted out from the main building slightly, as it was a decade newer than the rest of the building. If he ever needed to jump, he could be sure that he would survive the fall.

The message came as he was reading a particularly dense volume of musical history. He picked up the phone and skimmed through the message quickly. It was short and left no room for misinterpretation.

REPORT TO BARCELONA OFFICE

The Professor quietly picked up his bag and headed to the front desk.

-X-

The _Argo II_ was well underway and out into the water by the time Annabeth allowed herself to relax. She had been nervously searching the harbor for some sign of police presence the entire time the ship had prepared for undocking. There had been a slight scare when a sudden explosion had rocked the boat, but Leo had just leaned out from the engine room as everyone had come running and grinned. “Nothing to worry about, _muchachos_! Just some technical difficulties.”

She could have just about stabbed him then, before she remembered that she didn’t have her knife anymore. Funny how she could forget that.

But now they were out in the ocean, with the African coastline comfortingly vanishing behind them as the wide, perfect _blue_ of the sky and sea stretched out before them. The rest of the crew had head down to get ready for dinner, but Annabeth was content, for the moment, to just stand on the prow and let the sharp salty spray of the ocean flick her bare arms.

She flinched momentarily as another pair of arms came to rest on her shoulders, before realizing it was Percy and leaning back into his chest. “Hey, Wise Girl,” he whispered quietly into her left ear. One of his fingers played with her collarbone as they leaned against the railing and stared out into the skyline. The sun had gone down several minutes before and the sky was losing its burning gold hue as the darkness of night began to settle across the sky. The stars were already coming up behind them, but in front, the sun had left behind a few shades of color.

They finally stirred after a few more minutes of enjoying each other’s warmth. “We should probably head in,” she whispered, and they stepped downstairs.

In the low-ceilinged cargo hold they used for a dining room, Leo had just started bringing out his tacos. “And there’s extra for Frank,” he announced loudly, “Because we all want his arm to get better so that he can get back to being our collective human shield!” Frank awkwardly hid his face while everyone laughed and Hazel lightly let her hand rest on his new wound.

“All right!” Annabeth yelled as she and Percy took a seat. It still took a few seconds for everyone else to settle down. “We should be at Puerto Rico in less than a day, so Reyna can handle all our goods there. After that, we’ll need to figure where we can hide out for a while until the heat lets up a bit.”

“How ‘bout Ogygia?” Leo asked. “Technically U.S., but no one ever goes there.”

“Except for a girl very close to Leo’s heart!” Percy grinned as he said that and provoked another round of ribbing.

Annabeth waited for the laughs and jokes to subside before plowing on. “We can wait at Ogygia for a short time, but I wanted to ask you all if you’ve ever thought about what we might do after that.”

A pensive silence met her words. People in their line of work had notoriously short life-spans, which all of them knew. Annabeth, for her part, still remembered Charles and Silena, and she knew that everyone else still had their ghosts. None of them had seriously considered planning past the next job, if they were planning that far ahead. They usually left that to Annabeth.

“It’s just that this is more money than we’ve ever had before,” Annabeth continued, “and me and Percy . . .” She trailed off for a second. Everyone was watching her as she licked her lips and continued. “We’ve been thinking about trying to start over.”

_Start over_. Those were dangerous words in their business. The idea had seemed so close to their grasp last night, as the two of them had lain in bed and gone over the numbers in hushed voices, but out in the open, the words seemed to snarl at them just for considering the notion. None of them had come here by choice. Annabeth for one had no idea what reaction she would get if she went looking for her father right now.

Then Piper grinned at her. “If you think we can make it happen, then I’d love to find a house that doesn’t explode every few days.”

“Hey!” Leo shouted in mock anger. “It never explodes, just-”

“Sends up enough smoke to give us all lung cancer?” Jason was grinning, too.

" _Los dios_ , man, you’re supposed to be on my side!”

As everyone started shouting again, Percy leaned over to Annabeth. “I think they’re on board.”

She nodded slightly in relief. There had just been something terrifying about the act of actually bringing this idea out into the open, but now that it was out, she wondered why she had ever worried. They were family, after all. They wouldn’t –

She stopped. She turned very slowly to Percy, who looked like a puppy who had just performed a clever trick.

“Seaweed brain, was that a boat pun?”

-X-

The Professor stepped down the aisle, looking for an empty seat. The plane itself was mostly empty, as few took would take a plan flight to Puerto Rico in the middle of February.

He took the one that was nearest to the emergency exit and leaned glanced out the window. The stars had been visible during the ride to the airport, but electrical lights were now drowning them out.

Overhead, the pilot began to drone about safety procedures as a stewardess pantomimed the movements, then it was enjoy your flight and the lights dimmed. The plane began to trundle down towards the runway. There was a moment of stillness, and then the plane accelerated as pressure all over the front of his body pulled him a little deeper into his seat. Against his back, he became aware of a rip in the cheap cloth that had been hastily covered with duct tape.

Outside the window, the ground began to fall away as the lights of the airport shrank down to little stars, until the whole structure was just a slight pinprick in the darkness. The plane banked sharply to the right and began to turn.

As the lights on the overhead came back on, the Professor reviewed his situation dispassionately in his mind. There were six other people on the plane besides him, not counting the stewardess and the pilot. Two were couples, one of them about to be married and the other about to go through a breakup. There was a left-handed woman, probably a college student, who was digging her way through a textbook on literature with a tricolor highlighter. Behind him, a tired-looking salesman was holding onto a small package as if his life depended on them as he slept. In all likelihood, they were some kind of wares he needed to sell. If any of the people were going to kill him, the Professor would have guessed the student. Of the six, she was the only one who looked even half-awake.

He hadn’t seen the pilot yet, but the stewardess had the slightly wavering gait of someone who had drunk too much the night before. All things considered, he considered himself safe from an attack, though still at risk from death by a piloting error.

He waited fifteen minutes while the plane slowly went to sleep. The salesman was already snoring when the plane took off, the couples followed, one after another, and the college student fell asleep over her textbook. He measured her breaths before he was satisfied that she was actually asleep. The stewardess had long since disappeared into the back of the plane, leaving him entirely alone.

The Professor reached into his backpack and pulled out an unopened manila envelope, which he quickly slit open with a pen.

Treadstone had done its research.

The papers told him that he was looking for a ship that was informally known in criminal circles as the _Argo II_ , captained by a crew of 7 mercenaries. They normally did work as eco-terrorists on behalf of an individual known as Grover Underwood, though they weren’t above doing odd jobs on the side. Their main liaison was based in Puerto Rico, named Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano. She handled the business side of their ventures, and took her share from their profits. If he wanted to find the crew of the _Argo II_ , he would need to start with her. Underneath the files, Conklin had left a note.

IF YOU ENCOUNTER A JUPITER TEAM, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES LEAVE IDENTIFYING EVIDENCE.

The Professor’s mind briefly flashed to the pills he had in a small bottle wrapped in X-ray proof socks in his suitcase.

Then he reached into back into the envelope and drew out a sheaf of bound papers that carried all the information Treadstone had been able to scrounge on Arellano’s base of operations.

-X-

The Jupiter office at Langley was already looking empty, as the smarter operatives began to move to other, less disgraced divisions. Grace was brooding on that when Lupa popped her head into his private room.

“We’ve found them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, what did you think? In character, out of character? Please give me some advice!


	3. Coming into Focus

**ii.**

In the end, they decided that only Annabeth, Percy, and Jason would be heading up to see Reyna. The rest stayed behind to watch the _Argo_ while Leo worked on something that he promised would be “freaking awesome” and the others tried to keep him away from the napalm drums.

“Remind me again,” Annabeth was saying as they navigated through a series of street vendors, “why we even let Leo buy that napalm?”

“It was a two-for-one deal in barrels.” Jason frowned, as if belatedly realizing how insane that sounded out loud. “I mean, he kept going on about what a steal it was and the rest of us were too tired to deal with him.”

“Too tired to not buy a barrel of war crimes?”

“It was after Bologna. I mean, the rest of were pretty burned out and you know how Leo likes to down a bottle of Red Bull right before big arguments from that stash he has in the engine room. Plus, you know, you and Percy were . . .”

The conversation trailed off as they thought back to those weeks. Annabeth noticed that the area around Percy’s knuckles had visibly whitened at the unintended memory. Then:

"Well,” he said brightly, “we’ll just need to get our own stash for when he tries that again. Look, we can get started right now!”

He was pointing at a supermarket a few stores down the street. Looking a bit more closely, Annabeth could see several girls standing around the entrance who seemed to be arguing about something. One girl in particular stood out for wearing a familiar spiked leather jacket in the Mediterranean heat. Very familiar.

“Thalia!” Jason suddenly shouted, and the girls looked up from their argument to see Jason waving his arms and running up to them.

Annabeth couldn’t help but grin at Jason’s eagerness. He hadn’t even known that he had had a sister for the first sixteen years of his life; he was like a puppy whenever they crossed paths. Annabeth and Percy jogged up behind him, but Thalia didn’t look happy to see them. She looked scared.

She quickly pushed past the other girls and grabbed Annabeth and Jason by the shoulders while Percy followed, looking confused.

Not that she minded.

Thalia let go of them at the entrance to alley. “You shouldn’t be here.”

-X-

An airplane was roaring through the skies, its wings outstretched and the landing wheels extended like claws seeking a branch. It circled the airport several times until the runway was clear before it came down. Forward windows like eyes guided the plane as it scattered several flocks of pigeons that were nesting on the tarmac.

One of the pilots cursed as a bird flew momentarily across his window and blocked his view. It dodged the windshield, but, dazed by the close encounter, it accidentally flew too near to the turbine beneath the left wing and was sucked in.

In the cockpit, the assistant pilot only noticed slight turbulence on his side and jotted down a note to himself to get the turbine checked after they had landed. If a bird had gotten stuck inside, it would be hell for the cleanup crew and an extra hour groundside for him.

In the passengers’ area, a man had already begun looking for his prey.

-X-

Thalia had led them through a series of back alleys to Reyna’s building, which to everyone looked like an abandoned vacation home, with vines and long grass growing over the locked gates and solid stone walls covered in fading graffiti.

Thalia had also dismissed the rest of her gang. “They won’t tell anyone,” she had promised. “The Hunters might not like you, but they’re loyal to each other.”

The house itself was surrounded by a tall brick wall topped with outward-facing spikes, and the only visible entrance was a wrought-iron gate with padlocked chains holding the doors shut.

The only time Annabeth had asked about the house, Reyna had tersely told her that the house was a “present from her father” and cut the conversation off there. She had never been in the house itself before, since Reyna preferred to do her business at some warehouses by the docks where her older sister worked, but circumstances were clearly desperate.

Thalia led them to a section of the wall that faced the ocean and pulled up an iron sewage grate from the street. She looked up at them, then flicked her head down impatiently. “Well? Get in!”

Looking down into the dark underground, Percy looked like he was going to be sick and Annabeth didn’t feel much better. Thalia was tapping her foot impatiently when Jason leaned over to her.

“Tartarus,” he whispered, though Annabeth could hear him despite the low tone.

Thalia’s expression changed to one of worry. “Hey, sorry about that. Forgot that you might not -”

“It’s fine.” With trembling hands, Percy started climbing down and Annabeth followed without hesitation. She’d be damned if she let him go in alone.

Jason came a few seconds later, and Thalia closed the grate as she climbed down last.

It was only a few feet till they reached the tunnel. It stretched off in two direction, with smooth concrete walls and a few dim fluorescent lights that didn’t help them see more than a few yards in either direction. When Thalia reached the floor, she flicked on a flashlight and started leading them deeper in. They passed three more ladders leading upwards, and Annabeth couldn’t help noticing Percy looking at each of them with longing as they passed.

When Thalia finally stopped, she pointed at the ladder besides her. “This one leads into the house.”

This time, Annabeth and Percy couldn’t climb out quickly enough. Percy ended up banging his head on the way out. Reyna was waiting for them upstairs.

-X-

The golf bag came with a tag that told U.S. Customs officials that it was officially diplomatic luggage and immune from search and seizure, as codified in article 27 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The officials who cared enough to wonder what was in the bag likely assumed that it was the belongings of some international official who was hoping to get away from work in the Caribbean for a week.

The Professor didn’t care as long as it worked.

As soon as he had picked up his bags from baggage claim, he slipped into the men’s bathroom and locked the stall. Inside, he zipped open his bag, checking one of the hairs he had intentionally left zipped into the teeth to make sure that no one had opened. It was in the same spot, 23 teeth from the opening tooth and exactly half an inch in length. He pushed aside a few clubs that had never been used but that he had gone over with sandpaper to make them seem broken in. An SIG SG 550 stared up at him from the bottom of the bag. He quickly weighed each of the clips with his hands, making sure that they were the right weight, before quickly checking the firing pin.

From a side pocket, he dragged out a CZ 100 and clicked a full clip into the magazine. It went into a holster at the back of pants, hooked onto this belt, where it would be covered by his coat.

It occurred to him, as he flicked a bead of sweat from above his eyes, that he wasn’t in Europe anymore and would need to find an alternative of the coat, which would sure draw odd stares. After a minute’s consideration, he slipped the holster up around his abdomen and pulled his shirt over it. He folded his coat and threw it over his shoulder, then stepped out of the stall. Outside, an older man threw him a dirty look as if asking what had taken him so long before going in after him.

The Professor washed his hands in the sink, ran his hands through his close-cropped hair, and stepped out back into the airport. He followed a series of signs that led him out into the street, where he raised a hand to hail a taxi.

-X-

“They’re in the villa.”

“Over there?”

“Yes. Obviously.”

“We don’t need to pay for those medical bills, you know.”

“Just- Just keep it quiet, ok? Please? Some of us have to live here.”

-X-

“You’re sure no one had the chance to see you?” Reyna repeated, rubbing her eyes with a hand. Annabeth couldn’t help noticing that she looked really tired and, inexplicably, felt a sudden rush of warmth for her. She hadn’t realized Reyna cared about them so much.

“No one,” Percy repeated, “could have seen us and connected us with the job, ok? We took all the right steps. We made up a safari trip to distract the hotel, we made sure to accidentally run into the police so that they would know our story, we did everything!”

“Well, you must have made a mistake,” Reyna snapped. “Whoever hired the people you robbed must have found out, because they put a hit out on your crew and your cargo.”

“How bad?” Annabeth interrupted.

Reyna fixed her with a stare. “Bad enough that I was almost tempted.”

Jason whistled under his breath.

“Yup,” Percy muttered sourly. “That’s pretty bad.”

“And our sponsor,” Reyna continued as if they hadn’t spoken, “went silent according to Octavian.”

“Wait, we were working through _Octavian_?” Percy sounded mutinous. “Remember Gwen?!”

“He came to me,” Reyna said coldly. “And I thought you guys needed the money?”

“Percy, go outside,” Annabeth whispered.

He looked at her for a moment with a gaze that looked like she had just stabbed, and she tried to tell him with her eyes _I know but this really isn’t the time_. They watched each other like that for a few minutes until Percy’s eyes started to twitch.

Jason finally stood up and walked outside with Percy as he muttered, “Come on, man. Just breathe.”

The room remained tense even after the door closed, though Thalia just looked confused.

“So. Octavian.”

Reyna sighed and slumped back into her chair in defeat. “Look, if you’re going to kill him, not that I really mind, could you just do it after we get paid?”

“That’s fair.”

-X-

If he’d had a choice, he would have staked out the house a week ahead of time. He would know the layout of the entire building, every way in and out, and would have left motion sensors by all the gates. He would have urchins watching the doors and weapon drops in all the surrounding buildings.

You don’t always get what you want.

-X-

Percy was pacing the hallways, his finger tapping on the edges of his jeans, on the walls, on each other, anywhere. Jason was leaning against the edge of the hallway watching him.

Something prickled at the back of Percy’s mind, like a spider crawling along the back of his head. For some reason, that made him smile, thinking of one time that he had woken up to Annabeth screaming. He’d had his Glock in his hand before he’d realized that she had woken up from a spider crawling on her forehead.

"It’s not _funny_ , Seaweed Brain,” she’d hissed, and he had been doubled over in laughter and wasn’t able to stop to reassure that _no, of course it wasn’t_.

She had made him promise that he would clean out their entire quarters, but he’d never said when. And a few days later –

He stopped smiling. He stopped pacing. He just stopped.

Jason stood up and frowned. “Bro, you OK?”

His words settled into a slow buzz in the back of Percy’s mind, words that he heard but couldn’t understand.

Suddenly, the walls were too constricting and everything was too tight and too small and _drowning_.

He started walking down the hallway. It was all he could do to stop himself from running. From behind, Jason asked him where he was going, but the words were garbled, so Percy was honestly only half-certain he had properly understood him.

“Outside,” he shouted. He started running.

-X-

“Where’s Octavian these days, anyway?”

“Last I heard, he was in Miami. Same place above that old bar.”

“And he said our employers haven’t called us?”

“Just about. He also asked if he knew where we were.”

"Fucking snake wanted to turn us in, didn’t he?”

“Probably.”

Annabeth let loose an angry, frustrated breath and ran her fingers through her hair. “Do we know who put out the hit?”

“I’m guessing it’s the people who were getting the goods delivered in the first place, but that’s just a guess.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

A frown. “Girls?”

-X-

Jason was running as he caught up with Percy. Percy himself was already outside, having broken one the sliding doors open and was lying down in the overgrown grass outside.

“Look,” Jason growled, “you can’t just run off like that.”

He swung the door completely open and stepped out into the Puerto Rican sun.

There was a crack and Jason Grace fell bleeding to the ground.

-X-

Both Annabeth and Reyna looked up in surprise at Thalia, who was holding up her phone at them.

“Phoebe just sent a message. She wants me to head back. Says she thinks she saw someone -”

The door burst open with a bang that had everyone scrambling for their weapons. (Annabeth couldn’t help noticing that Reyna had pulled an Uzi from somewhere.) Percy staggered into the room, blood spilling from a red spot in his shirt. He carrying Jason over his shoulder.

-X-

“Who the hell gave the order to shoot?!”

“That wasn’t us, sir.”

“Fuck. FUCK! Send in the ground team!”

-X-

“Jason!” Thalia screamed and ran to her half-brother. Glancing over, Annabeth could see a little red hole in his neck that had a surprisingly little amount of blood coming out. Just a trickle, like the tracks of a single tear.

“We’ve got company,” Reyna announced. “I count two hostiles from the north, two from the street, and three from the south. All armed.”

 _And the east is the beach_ , Annabeth completed in her head.

Reyna looked up sharply. “Can the four of you take care of yourselves?”

Despite everything, Annabeth took the time to send Reyna a look that clearly asked, “Really? _Us?_ ”

Reyna grinned. “Go on ahead. Thalia can take you to street level. I’ve got some backups to grab and them I’m burning this junk.” From between her lips, her teeth flashed like those of a wolf, and Annabeth didn’t bother asking if she would be safe. This was Reyna, after all.

-X-

 _Five hostiles_ , the Professor thought, his scope traveling quickly over the surrounding streets. He gave it one minute at most before they noticed him if he continued sniping and ten minutes before an effective police presence got here. Fifteen if Jupiter was involved and was running interference.

Of course, he couldn’t be sure it was Jupiter, which meant he technically wasn’t barred from involving himself. He paused for a moment to see if any orders came in through his earpiece, but control seemed content to let things play out.

His sight scanned for a second, until he noticed they had received an order. It had been through radio, but some of the men’s heads had almost imperceptibly shifted towards the one third to the left from the center before they had caught themselves. Impossible to see if you didn’t know what you were looking for. The crosshairs settled on the man’s tousled hair, quietly slowed to a stop. The Professor calmed his breathing, allowed himself to blink freely. The hardest part was always right before –

He pulled the trigger.

-X-

“Sir, sniper just hit Barry from behind.”

“Dammit, everyone get cover! Do we have a line of sight?”

“Got him, sir, office building behind us, third floor, fifth window from the north.”

“Johnson, Smith, Westchester, head in. The rest of you, wait one minute, then head to the villa.”

-X-

He managed to drop one of the three before the other two ran past a line of trees a local business had decided would look good had planted. After that, they were under the yawning and in the building.

 _Close quarters in an office building_ , he analyzed quickly. _Not good for an assault rifle_. He clicked off the SG 550, slipped it into his golf bag, and reach for his holster.

-X-

Annabeth, Percy, and Thalia managed to get past a number of windows miraculously un-sniped. Thalia managed to lead them back to grating that led to underground sewer system before holding up her hand.

“Wait,” she hissed and pulled an Uzi out of her jacket. Seeing Annabeth’s expression, Thalia just rolled her eyes. “Live dangerously, ok?”

She hurried to a window and fired in the general direction of the gate, where three of the men were setting to work on the lock and chains. “Don’t head down until we’ve managed to get them as far onto the villa grounds as possible. Then they’ll lose some time searching the house and we can get out on the street.”

Percy, after a minute, got up and joined her with his Glock, firing at the intruders, most of whom had now taken cover. One exceptionally stupid, brave, or unlucky man was left with bolt cutters to try to cut through the chains.

Annabeth hurriedly unwrapped a length of gauze they had grabbed from a bathroom a few rooms back and began wrapping it around Jason’s neck. The boy had passed out some time ago, leaving Annabeth to frantically check his pulse every few seconds. His face was losing color by the second and a little froth had appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Outside, there was a slight _clink_ and a shout of triumph, followed by the pounding of boots. “I’m guessing now is a good time to head down?” she asked.

-X-

The elevator was coming up to his floor, but the Professor knew no one would be inside of it. No professional would ever willingly step inside an enclosed metal box without an escape route for an extended period of time.

Sure enough, steps were pounding up from the stairwell, and after a moment, the Professor could tell the difference between the two.

As soon as the sounds of steps rounded the bend towards his entrance door, he swung around and squeezed off two shots before diving behind the steel door.

Three bullets crashed into the door and wall, while one whizzed through the small crack. A second later, it was followed by a grenade.

The Professor charged for the nearest door to an office, crashing through and pushing the bolt of the lock straight through the drywall of the building. He collapsed onto the floor and tucked his body into a ball. A moment later, the explosion blew in the drywall surrounding the doorframe and knocked him forward several feet.

He stopped his rolling by slamming his foot against the table at the end of the room as he rolled towards it, then pushed himself off and spun himself so that he faced the doorway again while drawing his CZ. At that instant, the more trigger-happy of the two gunmen burst through blasted entrance to the stairwell into the hallway, leaving himself open to the Professor. He shot him three times, twice in the abdomen and once in the head. At the last, the man’s head jerked backwards as if yanked by wire and a splattering circle of blood burst against the white office wallpaper behind him. The body fell to the ground, the head wound leaving a single long trail of blood as it dragged against the wall.

He then pushed himself against the wall, trying to find some cover. The next gunman would be more careful, having seen what happened to his partner, and was unlikely to step neatly into his line of sight.

Sure enough, the second man, holding his handgun (Beretta 92FS, the Professor automatically logged) close to his body and circling around the open stairwell entrance. The Professor fired two shots in his direction, thinking _7 rounds left_. After hearing the man jump backwards in surprise, he began inching towards the doorway out of the office and into the hallway. Better line of sight, but more open to fire.

He paused at the entrance, weighing his options. He could hear a few shuffling steps that were bringing the man further down the hall.

The Professor suddenly raised his arm to the ceiling and shot out the lighting fixture directly above him. A slight darkening, but enough for him to hit the ground rolling as a gunshot flicked inches above him. He came up on one knee and fired three times in the direction the sound of the gunshot.

An agonized scream and a thump told him that he had hit.

The man was lying on the floor, his breath a wheeze as blood dripped out from a reddening spot in the center of his shirt. His gun was lying a few feet away from his hand, and as the Professor watched, he began to crawl, leaving a trail of red on the floor as he dragged himself along with his hand and knees.

The Professor stepped over, aimed, and shot him in the back of the head.

 _Three rounds left_. He stopped to look around at the empty rooms. _Thank God it’s Sunday_.

-X-

Annabeth raised the grating just an inch, and saw a pair of booted feet facing away from them several yards away. Scanning in a 360 quickly, she couldn’t see anyone else. She held out her hand below her, and Percy handed her the Glock. She carefully brought it up to her eye line.

Handguns, strictly speaking, weren’t the best tool for sharpshooting, even at this range, but Annabeth carefully calmed her breathing and tried to get her hands under control. It had been a long day and her nerves had never been the same since –

 _Stop_ , she ordered.

She carefully centered the ridge along the top of the Glock that made up the ironsight, and took a breath. As she breathed out, she quickly squeezed twice.

He screamed and fell to the ground.

Then she was scrambling up as fast as she could, running over to the man, vaulting over a car. He was gibbering into an earpiece that was probably transmitting to the idiots back in the villa, and she quickly brought the butt of her gun down on his head as hard as she could three times in rapid succession. He fell silent.

By the time the agents had gotten out of the house, where Reyna had had some fun holding them up before making her own escape, Annabeth, Percy, Thalia, and an unconscious Jason were already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case there are any concerns about the timing of this, I actually have this work finished and I'll be posting every day or every other day. Also, thank you to that one Kudos! First Kudos on this site! Bless!


	4. Gathering Winds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look! More Randoms! GET OUT OF MY FIC! LOL, but no, I have no idea why my brain comes up with these people out of nowhere.

**iii.**

Abdiel pushed the door of the closet a crack, letting a thin blade of light slide into the supply room. Seeing no one, he pushed the door out a little further. In his hands, he gripped the handle of his mop just a little tighter. He knew it wouldn’t help, but it made him feel better in his gut, and to be honest, that was where he did most of his decision-making.

When the first gunshots had gone off, he’d run to the front desk to try to call the police, but none of the landlines had responded. He supposed he could have gone upstairs to see what the trouble was, but the company didn’t pay him nearly enough to risk his life.

He needed a drink, he decided, and then he’d find his friends and tell them the story. Pretty good story. Might get him a free glass or two.

Suddenly, with a sharp burst of fear so quick it felt like courage, he threw open the door and burst into the hall, raising the mop like a sword.

The empty hallway stared back at him, as if asking what he had expected.

 _Where were those_ coño _security guards?_

He started walking down the hallway, wincing at the echoes as the hard plastic at the bottom of his shoes scraped against the cheap linoleum of the hallway floor. Someone was going to hear, he thought, someone was going to hear and come looking for him and . . .

He reached the elevator without being shot.

He would go to the security room, he decided. There was a nice, new electronic lock there, and he had the key, because even security didn’t like mold growing on the ceiling, and he could lock himself in and there was even a direct line to the police there (maybe . . . he was pretty sure he’d heard someone mention that), yes, that was a plan –

The elevator dinged pleasantly and the doors smoothly slid open. He slammed the button for ground floor and began clicking on the DOOR CLOSE button as quickly as he could. For a few agonizing moments, during which he was sure he could hear the hint of footsteps, the doors stubbornly refused to close. Then they slid together with a slight creak from years of rust and the metal box began heading down.

He pressed his head against the cool, not-very-clean metal of the walls and felt the slight vibrations that came from the elevator moving on a pulley system that hadn’t been updated in years. It was going to be fine, he told himself. You’ve got a plan, a plan, _a plan_ . . .

Of course, that had never helped before.

He jumped when the elevator dinged to tell him he had arrived.

The doors slid open and he poked his head out like a turtle out of a shell to peek around. To the left, he could see the sign titled “EMPLOYEES ONLY” that would take him to security. He took one last glance around the room, taking in the empty greeting desk and the glass doors leading to the outside. He could run he supposed, but he would be running into an unknown.

Nope. Better to wait for the police.

He hurried towards the employee door, pushed it open, and slipped into the hallway. Two doors down, he thought, two doors down to the security room and . . .

 _Thank God, there was someone there, his hands on the doorknob and he wouldn’t be trying that if he didn’t have a key, that meant he worked here,_ thoughts flickered through Abdiel’s mind, but in his defense, it had been a _long_ day.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, security, where the hell have you people -”

The man raised his hand as if greeting and –

-X-

“So, do we get WANTED posters?”

Everyone blinked and turned to Leo.

“And do they have our bounties, like, broken down on a price list?”

Hazel wrinkled her nose. “What are you talking about?”

“Just wondering how much I’m going for these days,” Leo said. “I mean, I can understand not being as pricey as Percy or Jason, maybe . . . but am I worth, like, two Franks, or three Franks?”

“Hey!”

Annabeth rubbed her nose as Frank stood up to defend his masculinity and murder-worthiness. Thalia had dropped them off at the ship, given them a phone number, and told them to keep her posted on Jason’s status before running off with her Hunters. The _Argo II_ had left port a few minutes later and, as it happened every time they left harbor, Annabeth was left to wonder if they should have just left Leo behind.

“All I’m saying,” Leo was shouting as he ran around the table to keep it between him and Frank, “is that Frank’s thing is being the muscle around here, and with a broken arm -”

“You’re just digging your hole deeper, Leo,” Percy shouted with a laugh. When Leo made his circuit by Percy, he stuck out his leg and tripped him.

“No fair! You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“Since when?”

“I saved an extra taco for you a week ago, remember? A whole one of my special tacos!”

“You only gave it to me because even you didn’t want to eat it!”

The door slammed open with a bang and Piper stuck her head into the room, fixing everyone with a deadly stare. “Can you all keep it down? I’m trying to put Jason to bed.”

Everyone sobered at that reminder.

“Look.” Piper closed her eyes, putting a hand over her face, and Annabeth was startled to realize how close to tears she was. “I think we’re going to need to get actual medical help for him. Like, a doctor and a hospital.”

Dead silence greeted her words. They all knew the risks involved with a hospital and leaving a paper trail. That was how amateurs in their business got killed.

“We might need some kind of surgery,” Piper continued, “on his throat, I mean. It’s looking pretty bad right now, and I think some bones might have broken. He’s hanging on, but I don’t know if . . .”

Annabeth caught her before she hit the ground sobbing. She sat there on the ground for a few minutes, rubbing small circles into her back while Piper cried into her shirt. The others sat quietly. Leo opened his mouth, then thought better of it after Percy threw him an angry glare.

Finally, Hazel sighed. “I’ll ring up my brother.”

-X-

Conklin looked up in disinterest as Director Grace pushed his way into his office. He closed the file he had been reading (no reason for Grace to see what was inside _that_ ) and drawled, “You know, I could have security throw you out of here on your ass, Grace.”

“That’s _Director_ Grace, Conklin.”

"Really? Heard you were having some trouble with your little pet project. Thought control was rethinking some of your funding . . .”

Judging by the vein popping at the top of Grace’s forehead, he’d hit a nerve.

“How’s your hit working out, by the way? See, I never thought it was a good idea, using mercenaries instead of American agents, but the cost-return ratio looked so good when you presented it. Shame those costs are starting to come in, isn’t it? I told you people, you can’t trust men and women who kill for money. Might as well be serial killers who collect credit cards.”

“You know,” Grace snarled, “those files I got on the _Argo II_? I got those from your office, Conklin.”

He didn’t blink. “I know. Asked Parsons to send them in.” He was wearing a shit-eating grin right now, and he didn’t care. “We’re on the same side, Grace. The problem is, the people you’re using aren’t. They’re on their own side. That means that when they have to choose between saving American lives and saving their own asses, they’re going to choose their precious asses. You can’t pay people like that enough to die for you. Risk their lives, maybe, but not die.”

“You’ve been waiting for chance like this, haven’t you?” Grace spat. “Waiting like a snake to push Treadstone through. Think this is your big break, Conklin? The hell do you think is going to happen if that crew decides to go to the press, huh? Thought about that?”

“That’s your problem, Grace. Not mine.”

“You have an asset in the field right now, don’t you?”

Conklin’s grin just grew wider.

-X-

Looking at the computers, the Professor knew that nothing on them could be saved. Ms. Avila Ramírez-Arellano had done her job well. The furnace had turned up nothing salvageable and there wasn’t time to do a proper search, as the wailing sirens in the distance told him.

On a hunch, he grabbed a landline phone sitting under a desk, where it looked like it had been dropped in a hurry, and pressed REDIAL. A number flashed on the screen, he memorized it quickly, then pressed the hook switch and headed out of the villa. As we walked he, sent the number to control.

They got back to him a few hours later, when he was waiting in a hotel lobby about to rent a room for the night.

“CIA operative named Octavian. Affiliated with Jupiter. He’s under suspicion for espionage,” Conklin’s deputy reported. He then listed off an address.

“Do I have clearance?”

After only a moment’s pause: “Yes.”

The Professor hung up and turned to the help desk. “Ma’am, I’d like to cancel my room.” _I have a flight to Miami to catch_.

-X-

Nico di Angelo met them at Tampa Bay, where he drove them to a hospital that promised “Only the Best Care for the Best Patients!©”

“Sounds like something a bored teenager would come up with,” Jason muttered a little hysterically as a pair of orderlies wheeled him into the operating room.

Piper made it clear under no uncertain terms that she would be with him, and the doctors finally got out of her way when she pulled out her knife.

Hazel just sighed at that and walked over to her brother, who was in a quiet but heated argument with Alecto, one of her dad’s secretaries. He stopped when she put a hand on his shoulder, and he shot Alecto a look that clearly told her they would finish their discussion later before walking off with Hazel.

“Listen, thanks. You know, for . . .”

“Wasn’t a problem,” Nico muttered, rubbing the back of his neck and turning a little red. “Just borrowed dad’s jet and phoned up a hospital. Wasn’t a big deal.”

“Right. You just _borrowed_ a _jet_.”

“Dad won’t care for a few days. He’s in D.C. right now. Apparently his little brother, you know, the one in the CIA, apparently he’s in some hot water.”

“Jason’s dad?”

“Yeah, that one.” An uncomfortable silence settled over them for a few minutes. The parents of their little circle wasn’t something that was brought up often. How do you talk about parents who had illegitimate children and then just abandoned them? Nico always seemed guilty when they talked about that, though Hazel wasn’t sure if he’d gotten the better end of the deal or not. Their dad wasn’t really the kind of guy that she could imagine spending extended amounts of time with. Actually, her whole family on that side was kind of screwed up. Not that her mom’s side was much better.

“Look, we need a small favor. Round-trip train tickets.”

“Sis, wouldn’t it be safer to lay low for a bit until this dies down?”

“When will that be, Nico? A month? A year? Ten years? We need money now.”

“If you would just -”

“I’m not taking dad’s money.”

When Nico flinched away from her with a hurt expression, Hazel realized that she might have spoken a bit sharply.

“Look, we have a lead. Octavian. He was the one working on for our employers.”

Nico sighed in defeat. “Where are you guys headed?”

­-X-

“Business or pleasure, sir?”

“Business.”

-X-

The train ride to Miami gave Annabeth plenty of time to think. Think about how they had ended up in this situation. Think about the different things they could do when they arrived. Think about how this could all end.

Nico had headed back to New York, though he had left them with a credit card to cover some expenses. Piper and Leo had stayed behind with Jason as he recovered in the hospital. That left her, Percy, Hazel, and Frank on the train to Miami.

They had been quiet most of the ride, trying to avoid attracting attention from the other passenger. They had taken seats in different cars, Percy had put on a stupid hat, and so far, so good.

Looking over through a window, she could see Percy in the next car. She remembered the conversation they had had only two nights ago. Things had seemed so much easier then, when the money was practically in their hands and they could see the road that would lead them out of the cycle of death they had trapped themselves in. She still wanted that. Settling down. Stopping. No longer running. She’d always wanted a degree in architecture. Still read any articles or books she could find.

But that had been two nights ago.

-X-

“Do you think they know about Octavian, sir?”

“They talked to his contact in Puerto Rico. We have to assume that they do.”

“Then why haven’t we brought him in?”

“Just an idea.”

“Bait?”

“Right.”

“Should I prep a ground team, sir?”

“No. I’ve already contacted Bryce Lawrence’s crew.”

-X-

Percy and Annabeth were waiting in a rental outside the nightclub as loud dance music blasted out into the street and pushed their eardrums into their heads. Percy called it a rental, anyways. She didn’t need to know where he had gotten it.

“Clear,” Frank reported into their ears. As always, it was comforting to know that someone was watching over them. Like some kind of benevolent god. A god armed with a Keppeler Fritz KS II Precision, which might have been the most comforting part of all. Hazel was watching his back in the apartment building where he had set himself up.

Percy and Annabeth glanced over at each other, then opened their respective doors and stepped out into the street.

“Why the _hell_ would Octavian live here?” Percy muttered as he rubbed his left ear.

Annabeth just shrugged. “To be fair, it _is_ the last place anyone would expect him to be hiding out. He’s probably soundproofed his room, anyways.”

“Let’s make that this level’s objective,” Percy muttered. “The heroes have to make it to the soundproofed room or die of ear damage . . . what?”

Annabeth shut him up pretty effectively when she kissed him. They held each other for a second, the pounding forgotten, and Percy’s hand found hers.

They broke apart, which Percy looked just a little disappointed about. Annabeth smirked. “Now, let’s get the job done.”

-X-

Leo was trying to figure out if the nurse would notice if he grabbed a surgical tools. Sure, they looked expensive, but this place was _loaded_ and some of those tools would be so useful with one his projects.

By the time he got back to Jason and Piper, who was helping him sip his dinner through a straw, which made Leo mime vomiting, his pockets were practically jangling with his ill-gotten findings.

_Ill-gotten findings? You’ve had too many conversations with Annabeth._

His friends, of course, noticed immediately.

“Look,” Leo said defensively at the expressions they were wearing, “if these people are just going to leave wonderful little presents for me like it’s my birthday, am I supposed to refuse them? They were practically asking to be taken.”

“ _Ahem_.” Someone cleared their throat behind him. Leo turned around to see a nurse standing awkwardly, as if trying to decide whether or not to take his words at face value.

“There’s someone who wants to see you,” she said nervously. “His name was -”

The door to the ward opened and a man stepped in, looked around, and focused on the three of them. The guy was huge and seriously muscled, like _Leo-might-break-his-hand-punching-him_ muscled. His black hair was slicked over a bronzed face and he was wearing golden sunglasses that just screamed _douchebag_.

“Girl, I think I’ll take it from here,” he announced grandly, waving his hand in a shooing motion, and the nurse ran off in obvious relief.

Leo was pretty sure he didn’t have any superpowers, but just to be safe, he tried focusing on her and thinking _get security get security get_ –

“Hey, beautiful,” he said, practically leering at Piper.

“Who are you?” she snapped, looking like she was doing her best not to spit at him.

“Name’s Orion. And you guys killed my mom a while back.” He bared his teeth. “Nice lady called Gaea.”

-X-

The inside of the nightclub was, if possible, louder than the outside. Though there were advantages to that.

They kept their heads ducked and pushed towards the employee door at the far end of the dance floor. There was a pretty massive bouncer standing outside with his arms crossed and sunglasses over his eyes.

“Sunglasses!” Percy yelled.

“I know!” Annabeth screamed back.

“AT NIGHT! AT A NIGHTCLUB!”

“I KNOW!”

Above them, the laser display was starting to give Annabeth a migraine. Either that or the pounding of the music was making her think she was.

The pair finally pushed their way to the end of the dancing crowd, where the bouncer stood in his own little sphere of isolation. Percy raised his Taser and put a few hundred volts of lightning into the bouncer’s face.

Above the music, no one could hear the body falling to the ground.

-X-

“Whoa! Chill!” Orion said as he hurriedly backed up. “Never said I was mad at you guys. Hated my mom. Probably would have killed her myself if you hadn’t beaten me to it.”

“What do you want?” Piper hissed. Her hand hadn’t left her knife, just as Leo hadn’t dropped his two steel-tipped hammers. Jason was trying to make a straw look threatening.

“Wanted to warn you guys,” Orion replied, grabbing a chair and sitting down far away from them. “Felt I owed you all for sparing me some awkward Christmases down the line.”

They looked at him with unconvinced expressions.

“Look, I’ll get to business, OK? Do you know who you ran into, back in Puerto Rico?”

“Some hitmen,” Leo growled.

“Don’t you wish? Nah, the people after you are CIA, or at least working for them. They’re the ones who hired the people your team killed in the first place. Octavian? He’s a CIA undercover operative.”

“Shit.” Jason tried to sit up. “We need to call Annabeth, tell her it’s a trap.”

“Calm down for a second. It’s not just CIA. Well, it is, but a different division. The people who hired your targets were a division called Jupiter. They’re basically an accounting section; they outsource all the CIA’s dirty work to people like us. Mercenaries, you know?. Problem is, that’s getting out of hand for them. From what I’ve heard, there’s a new section in the CIA right now called Treadstone. Their killers are 100 percent CIA. No foreign soldiers-of-fortune, no contractors, no terrorists.”

“Hey!” Leo yelled. “We’re not terrorists!”

Orion cocked his head skeptically. “Epirus?”

“ . . . Maybe a little bit.”

“Point is, I think Treadstone sent an assassin after you.”

“Just one?” Jason asked.

“Just one . . . You don’t get it, do you? Have you actually never heard of these people before? Treadstone? No bells ringing?”

They all slowly shook their heads.

“Fine,” Orion muttered with a sigh. “Look, I know that your team is good. That’s obvious. But this division is its own ball game. This man they sent after you? He’s going to cut you guys to pieces.”

“What is he,” Leo asked, “the ultimate badass?”

“More like . . . he doesn’t have a life outside of his work. At all.”

Orion looked at their skeptical expressions. “All right, all right.” He stood up. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

-X-

Octavian looked up from his computer when he heard a distinct thump on the door. He growled angrily, closed his Private tab, and shouted, “Echidna! Your team had better start keeping it down out there! I’m trying to do some work!”

He looked down again and opened his window. He heard the door creak open. “Look,” he snapped without looking up, “can you people do your job outside of my -”

A hole exploded in the corner of his computer, spraying pieces of glass and plastic in all directions. Octavian hurriedly spat out the few in his mouth and jumped to his feet. “What the hell -”

A man with close-cropped brown hair in a dark tan overcoat, white business shirt, and loosely knotted tie stood in the doorway. In his arms, he was cradling an assault rifle and pointing it right at Octavian’s face.

Octavian gulped. Looking past him, he could see the feet of a still body lying in the corridor.

The man stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him with his foot. “Take a seat, Octavian.”

Octavian hurriedly sat down. The man stepped around Octavian’s desk, giving his gun a clearer line of sight to Octavian. With one arm keeping the rifle pointed at him, the man grabbed a chair and pulled it around so that it faced Octavian. Then he took a seat as well.

“Several days ago, you contacted Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano to hire one of her teams to carry out a theft for you. A data package.”

The man paused until Octavian realized he expected some response and nodded hesitantly.

“Do you have the package with you?”

“No. But!” he hurriedly interrupted as the man cocked his rifle, “I know who has it.”

“Who?”

Octavian smiled a little bit, beginning to reclaim some control over the situation. He was starting to see how to get out of the situation. “How about we find out after you put your rifle away?” he asked.

The man shot him in the kneecap.

“AGGHH WHAT THE FUCK YOU SON OF A BITCH!” he screamed on the ground, clutching the mass of pulpy red that had been his knee. “ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT,” he yelled as the man pointed the rifle at him again. “They’re called the Seven,” he gasped, the pain slightly receding (he wondered if he was going into shock). “They’re on a ship called the _Argo II_ and they’re called the Seven you fucking . . .” His last curses trailed off into whimpers.

“Where are they?”

“Tampa Bay.” His voice was just a whisper now as he tried not to think about why he couldn’t feel the lower half of his leg.

“How do you know?”

Octavian gingerly touched his foot. He didn’t feel anything. “I hired a contract killer named Orion. He said he found the ship and three of the crew – ow, ow, _shit_ – at a hospital in the area – fuck, I need to get to a hospital . . .” His voice broke off into whimpers again. “Look, who are you? Do you work for Wombosi or Reyna or . . . who are you?”

“A bullet.” The man was watching him like he was trying to decide something.

“Look, my cover is that I work for a bank, right? Just drive me down to the local branch of JPMorgan and – look, whatever they’re paying you, I can match it, right? Just – fuck – just get me in a car, ok? You got what you needed. You don’t _need_ to do anything.”

“Does a bullet decide where it’s shot?” The man still looked like he was thinking.

“. . . What the fuck does that mean? Do you have any idea how crazy you sound? Look -”

“Orion the Hunter?” the man interrupted. “Killed gang leader Artemis the Huntress?”

“Yeah, that’s him,” Octavian murmured. The edges of his vision were starting to blur. He looked at the man who had just thrown him into a world of pain. He seemed to have come to a decision.  “But -”

-X-

Annabeth knew something was wrong when they started running into bodies. “Hazel?” she said into her speaker. Octavian had definitely soundproofed the walls. “Get the getaway vehicle ready, would you?”

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re running into people with guns.”

“That sounds pretty normal.”

“They’re all dead.”

“. . . I’ll start the engine.”

To her side, Percy had seemingly decided to take point and was trying to cover every door with his body in case someone tried to shoot her. It was cute, in a _you’re-going-to-get-yourself-killed-but-A-for-effort_ kind of way.

By the time they reached the top floor, both of their pairs of shoes were soaked red. The moment she saw Octavian’s door hanging open, she knew what she would find, but felt like she had to know for certain anyway.

He was lying on the floor, his hands still wrapped around what looked like it might have been a kneecap. It actually took a moment to recognize him, since part of his head was missing.

“Hazel,” she choked into her speaker.

“Yeah?”

“We’re leaving. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions?


	5. Sparks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to say, Kudos to all those people who gave me Kudos and comments! You people made my day!

**iv.**

“Leo?”

“Percy? Something wrong?”

“Listen, we got into some trouble.”

“Octavian.”

“No, he’s dead.”  
“Nice!”

“We didn’t kill him.”

“. . . Shit.”

“Yeah. So, we’re going to skip on the train tickets and drive back to the hospital. We have to pick up some supplies along the way anyway. We’ll be there in about six hours, and then we’ll figure out our next move from there.”

“ _Mucho Bueno_ , man. Try to come back in one piece.”

-X-

“Mr. Lawrence, I’m pleased to hear that you survived.”

“Yeah, that’s nice. Listen, I need you to arrange transport to Tampa Bay.”

“Is this off of Octavian’s information?”

“Yes. The private hospital.”

“Does it have an open grass field?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll send a helicopter.”

-X-

The little beep of the heart reader was starting to drive Piper insane, but she knew better than to hope that it would stop. The only reason it would stop before they left was if Jason had died.

She’d never liked waiting. Not waiting for her dad to come pick her up one day after being abandoned at an orphanage. Not waiting to meet her mother someday, until her dad had finally been honest in a fit of exasperation. Definitely not waiting to see if Jason was going to live or not.

Her dad had only really existed for the first three years of her life. There had always been a sense, somehow, that Piper had been an annoyance. She had never met her mother, though her dad had kept a few pictures. Her mother had died giving birth to her and somehow, she thought that her dad might have blamed her for that. He’d been a rising movie star anyway, with the lifestyle that accompanied that phrase, and Piper had just been an awkward carry-on to deal with. He’d ended up leaving her with a man named Chiron who had agreed to look after her and keep her birth a secret.

She ended up meeting Jason through Chiron, along with the rest of their crew, but she’d never really forgiven her dad for the way he’d dumped her like an old toy that he’d gotten tired of. She refused to see any of his movies, though she’d laughed when Leo had stolen one of the posters from a movie theater to use as a dartboard.

Of course, she was pretty sure all of them felt about the same way about _their_ parents.

-X-

The train ride to Tampa Bay took two hours, during which the Professor sat by the window and watched each person that came into the car. There weren’t that many at this hour, mostly just business and professors who had been working late. A few custodians and janitors skipping out on the night shift. At one point, a group of frat boys had charged onto the car and the Professor had wondered if this was an especially uninspired disguise by the Seven, but there had been nothing to support that suspicion and they’d left at the next stop.

He had made sure to wipe off the bottoms of his shoes with a napkin before getting into the station. He’d stepped in copious amounts of blood while he had cut his way to Octavian and it would have drawn too much attention to leave a trail of bloody footsteps in the train car.

About half an hour from the end of his ride, Control sent him a reply to the information he had sent out earlier.

TAMPA BAY PRIVATE HOSPITAL

INTENSIVE CARE UNIT ADMITTED ONE YESTERDAY

INVESTIGATION STYMIED

-X-

Leo didn’t let himself relax until Orion’s motorcycle disappeared from view at the bend of the road. “Creep,” he muttered and headed back into the hotel.

Piper was still sitting by Jason’s hospital bed, where he had fallen asleep again. Leo debated pouring ice water on his before deciding that Piper would kill him.

“Hey,” he said, sitting down.

“Is he gone?”

“Drove off on a motorcycle.”

“Hmph.” Piper sounded unconvinced.

The silence was, for a few minutes, only broken by the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor.

“You know,” Piper began, “I was thinking about my dad. About if I’m ever going to see him again.”

“You want to see him, Pipes, just head down to the movie theater.”

“You know what I mean.”

Leo sighed. “Look, I just don’t get why you’d want to see him. Sounds like a dick to me.”

“I don’t know . . .” Piper started playing with the end of her hair. “It’s just . . . Don’t you ever want to see your mom again?”

“My mom didn’t abandon me when I was three,” Leo pointed out with a glare. “My deadbeat of a dad might’ve disappeared but my mom never just left me. Why the hell is this even coming up?”

“Jason getting shot just got me thinking . . . Where do you think we’re going to be in ten years, Leo?”

“Easy. On a tropical beach, with some babe, drinking a banana daiquiri.”

“. . . Is that even a thing?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just sounded fancy.”

“What I’m trying to say is,” Piper pushed on, “I was thinking about what Annabeth and Percy were planning. About retiring and trying to live a normal life. Do you think that’s possible for people like us?”

Leo chewed on that for a minute, before replying, “I think if anyone can make it work, it’s them.”

“Leo, that’s not an answer.”

“I’m just saying, none of us thought they’d make it out of Tartarus. Don’t give me that look, you know it’s true. None of us thought it was possible, but they did. Seems like settling down and getting away from this would be impossible, but they might be able to pull it off.”

“And what about . . .” Piper’s voice trailed off and Leo looked at her somewhat pityingly.

“Pipes, if they can do it, I’m pretty sure you and Golden Boy could do it, too.”

“Don’t you ever wonder about that yourself, though?”

“Not really. I mean, where else can I work with dangerous weapons on a daily basis?”

“You could settle down with Calypso and be a car mechanic.”

“Huh.”

-X-

“Room service!” someone called from outside the door after knocking.

“Leave it outside!” he yelled.

Orion sat in his hotel room and opened his laptop. He clicked it into the portable wireless Internet connector he carried and opened his search program. It would run a search through all the ships that had docked in the Tampa Bay area in the last two days and find any that matched known descriptions of the _Argo II_ (stupid name, he thought).

It had probably been stupid to go introduce himself to the crewmates in the hospital, but he had needed visual confirmation before going to Octavian. Now, that last bit, he was _sure_ that that had been a mistake. Meant he now had someone that he had to share the profits with. He could still try to bypass Octavian and find the actual employer, but that would burn bridges. Just grit your teeth, he decided, and live off of room service while it’s still on Octavian’s tab.

Speaking of which . . . He left the program to run and headed to the door. He checked the eye port to make sure that no one was outside, then slid the chain lock into place and cracked open the door to pick up his dinner.

There was a sharp cough that Orion’s brain recognized as a silenced gunshot and Orion’s foot exploded into agony.

-X-

During his early years, Leo Valdez was living with his mother. She tried her best to give him a normal upbringing but honestly, there was just never enough money to cover the costs and they moved around too much for Leo to make much in the way of friends. Esperanza Valdez never really stopped blaming herself for that, even if she had no control over the road that had brought her here.

She gave him the best education she could, which meant that while Leo didn’t have much in the way of reading or writing, he could think three-dimensionally, fix a broken car engine with half the tool kit a professional would have used, and charm most couples into giving him a five-dollar tip.

This all changed one night, when Leo was eight years old. A fire broke out as the pair of them were closing up the shop Esperanza was working at.

Later, one of the nicer police officers would try to tell him that it must have been an accident that the doors had locked Esperanza in when the fire went off.

That didn’t help Leo much. Accident or not, only he could have locked those doors.

-X-

The Professor quickly crammed his gloved hand into Orion’s mouth before he could start screaming and kicked the door shut behind him. He hefted the larger man up as best he could and carried him over to a chair, where he roughly deposited the man.

This situation, he knew, would require a little more adaptation than Octavian. Octavian had been a bureaucrat, a pencil-pusher in the surest definition of the word. Orion would require more pressure before he bent.

On the table, the laptop pinged gently.

The Professor slid it around disinterestedly so that he could read it. Then he reread the screen to make sure he hadn’t hallucinated.

“Jesus Christ, it’s you, isn’t it?” Orion was gasping out between breaths. “You’re with -”

The Professor shot him without looking and pulled out his phone. He started typing a shipping berth into the map search.

-X-

Leo decided something was off when the helicopter started circling the hospital lawn.

“Is he good to go?” Piper demanded.

Leo hurriedly flipped through the form the doctors had left by Jason’s gurney. “Says here that they’ve finished all major surgery, but they recommend rest and further monitoring in case of -”

“Good enough,” Piper declared. “Come on, let’s get him up.”

Between the two of them, they managed to drag Jason to his feet and he started walking slowly forwards with each of them under one shoulder. Leo kicked the door open when they reached it and a nurse standing outside stood up in indignation.

“I’m sorry,” she demanded, “are you cleared to leave?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Leo said, nodding his head. “Doctor’s orders.”

-X-

Dakota was manning the Tampa Bay 911 call station when the call came.

“So, you guys got a helicopter on your lawn? And some goons with guns?” he asked nervously, wishing someone higher up was here for this craziness. In one hand, he was holding the phone a little away from his ear as the caller yelled at him that _yes, shit was going down_. In his other, he was digging through the protocol booklet to see the procedure for calling up a SWAT team.

-X-

It was a good thing that the parking lot was connected to the main hospital building, Piper thought. Otherwise, they would have been dragging Jason between them trying to run to their designated getaway vehicle while, presumably, a bunch of angry guys with guns shot at them.

As it was, they managed to make it into the parking lot while behind them, a few guns went off. “They probably won’t kill anyone, right?” she whispered worriedly. “I mean, once they realize we aren’t there.”

Neither of the boys answered her question.

The second floor of the lot was surprisingly empty, but below, they could hear a few footsteps tapping around.

Leo sent her a silent question with her eyes.

She just kept heading to their car. They would just have to try to make it past.

They were about halfway to the car when she almost dropped Jason. She caught him in time but he let out a low groan.

Below them, the footsteps stopped.

 _Please ignore it_ , she thought pleadingly. _Just ignore it._

The footsteps started again and started getting closer.

“Shit,” Leo hissed and the two of them picked up their pace, their footsteps now clattering loudly in the empty lot.

Below, the disembodied footsteps following them sped up as well.

The three of them practically slammed into the car and Leo immediately dug the keys out of his pocket. He quickly unlocked the passenger seat and they dropped Jason inside. Piper opened the driver’s door and had gotten inside when arms reached around Leo’s waist and pulled him away from the car.

“Fuck it, Pipes!” he screamed. “Drive!”

With a flailing leg he kicked her door shut.

Piper froze for a second, her body tensed as she reached for her knife. Then she saw Leo drop limply to the ground and beside her, Jason groaned as a thin stream of blood trickled out of his mouth.

So Piper did something she wasn’t proud of: she drove.

-X-

“All I’m saying,” Percy said in exasperation, “is that lime and limes sound really similar, ok? I mean, we got the right thing in the end didn’t we?”

The phone went off before Annabeth could retort at him. “Piper?”

On the other end, it sounded like Piper was fighting back sobs. “They found us at the hospital. Me and Jason got out, but Leo -” She broke off.

“Pipes, just get to the ship,” Annabeth ordered. “We’ll be there soon.”

She switched off and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “No more shopping trips,” she muttered. “Leo’s the only one who needs this stuff anyway.”

-X-

They threw him down on the floor before a guy with a shock of black hair that looked like it had been deliberately spiked.

“So,” Leo muttered through a mouthful of blood, “you the head honcho around here?”

The man kicked him in the stomach and Leo saw spots dance before his eyes.

“You’re just delaying the inevitable, you know,” the man said conversationally. “My name’s Bryce Lawrence, by the way.”

“Bryce, my friend,” Leo said with a blood-stained grin, “delaying the inevitable is one of my favorite hobbies.”

That earned him a few more kicks and left Leo spitting out a tooth onto the linoleum floor. “That’s going to be hell for the custodians, jerk.”

Bryce sighed as if dealing with a small child. He knelt down and lit a cigarette.

“That’s going to ruin your lungs, Bryce,” Leo spat out. “Along with your teeth. ‘Course, yellow teeth might actually be an improvement for you.”

Bryce took a long drag. Pulled it out and let the smoke circulate a bit before blowing it out slowly into the air. Leo coughed.

“You know something, Leo?”

“That you’re an idiot?”

“Heard about your mom.” Bryce smiled. “Were you afraid of fire after that?”

Leo looked up at him with a seething hate that stung more than his stomach.

“Guess so,” Bryce said and jammed the cigarette in Leo’s eye.

This time, Leo just screamed.

-X-

Piper suddenly brought the car to a screeching halt in the middle of the road and looked over at Jason. “If I leave a gun here, can you look after yourself?”

Jason frowned in confusion. “Pipes?”

“I need to go back.”

“Pipes, it’s too dangerous.”

“If it were him, he’d come back.”

“You don’t -”

“You know damn well he would.”

-X-

“Boss!”

Bryce looked up in exasperation from Leo whimpering on the floor. “What?”

“I think I see the other two.”

“What?”

“Outside, on the road.” The man held out a pair of binoculars and pointed at the road. “Look.”

Bryce ran up to take it and gazed outside. “Well I’ll be damned . . . Where’s the sniper?”

As the men ran up to the window to look outside, Leo stared ahead with his one good eye at a bag one of the men had left behind.

“No, listen, you just need to shoot out the tires. Don’t actually kill them, we need the package.”

“HEY!”

Everyone turned around to see Leo holding up a string of grenades. An empty bag lay at his feet. “Be afraid of fire.”

He pulled the pin.

-X-

Outside, two people watched a section of the hospital go up in flames and knew that their friend was lost.

-X-

They didn’t talk until the _Argo II_ in sight.

“Pipes.” Jason carefully reached out a hand and lay it on Piper’s. “Pipes.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the road.

“Pipes. There was nothing we could have done.”

“You don’t know that.”

Jason sighed. “I do. I was there with you, OK? I promise, there was nothing you could have done.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Pipes -”

“Don’t, Jason,” she pleaded as she finally turned her head to him. “Jason, please -”

He cut her off with a kiss. Probably insanely dangerous, given that she was driving, but after the night, he was pretty sure they both needed a reminder that they were alive.

“We’re getting out of this,” Jason promised. “You and me, OK? We’re done.”

Piper was looking at him as if seeing him for the first time. “OK,” she whispered. “We’re done.”

And then her head snapped backward as the front windshield exploded into shards of glass.

Her body slumped forward and the car began to list to the side until it crashed into a tree that had been planted on a little dirt square in the sidewalk, throwing Jason painfully into the glove cabinet.

 _No airbag_ , he thought randomly. _That’s why you go to a reputable dealer_.

As he looked up, somewhere in the darkness between two of the streetlights, a small burst of light flowered momentarily and crack rang through the night. So quickly it seemed instantaneous, there was a bang and the car began to lower to the ground.

The shooter had taken out a tire, Jason realized.

With one hand desperately clawing, he managed to unbuckle himself and with the other he grabbed Piper’s face. “Pipes,” he hissed. “Pipes.”

There was no reply and it was clear that there never would be.

Suddenly, Jason felt his stomach roiling and he threw open the passenger door and fell onto the street, the metal of the car between him and the distant shooter. Then he threw up everything he had managed to suck through a straw since the morning.

From beyond, he could hear a light tapping as steps began to draw themselves closer to him and Piper’s cooling corpse. His right hand reached into the car and opened the glove compartment, taking out a Walther handgun. He quickly checked the chamber. Five rounds.

He pulled himself to his feet and almost choked on the smell of iron in the air. He staggered out from the cover of the car and squinted. Beyond the dim lighting of the few, flickering street lamps, he could make out a slight shape moving towards him.

Jason began limping forwards, not even trying to find cover. He took a shot into the darkness and watched as the figure failed to fall. He shot again and a section of wall a few feet from the figure sparked as the bullet crashed into it.

There was another bright spot that flashed in the night and Jason crumpled to the ground, his knee on fire.

He choked back a scream. He wouldn’t give the shooter that satisfaction. He raised his handgun again and aimed. Fired twice.

The figure continued moving towards him, resolute and unflinching. Jason could remember when he had been that certain about life. He paused. _One bullet left_. The figure wanted him alive; that was clear. Alive to do . . . what? Betray his friends? Break eventually under whatever torture they (whoever _they_ were) had planned?

 _One bullet left_.

He could still smell iron in the air.

Jason raised the gun one more time and fired.

This time, he didn’t miss.


	6. Recuperation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, this one is going to be a bit short. Don't worry, though, things will pick up again soon.

**v.**

The Professor covered a surprising amount of ground searching the _Argo II_ before the police arrived. He dug through the engine room, most of the crew quarters, lifted up the covers for the toilet tanks, and pulled up the gratings on the deck floor in case of flooding during a storm. He didn’t find the data package.

Percy Jackson swam under the waves while he was busy and grabbed a plastic, waterproof box duct-taped to the side of the boat, came up for a lungful of air, and swam away.

-X-

The four remaining teammates were sitting in a dingy hotel room they had managed to rent for the night around a table while looking at a small black suitcase. They hadn’t tried to open it; their employers had made that a very specific condition for payment.

Right now, Annabeth was seriously considering just saying “Fuck it” and prying the box open. If nothing else, she wanted to know what the hell was worth a small army of bounty hunters.

Of course, there was still an unspoken hope that this job might somehow be salvaged, that they could still get their pay and move on. It was a foolish hope, of course. Not with Jason, Piper, and Leo cooling in a police corpse impound somewhere.

_We need to get out_ , Annabeth thought a little desperately and her fingers instinctively reached out to Percy’s. As soon as she found them, he grabbed her tightly and she realized that he was as scared as she was.

“So,” Frank finally said, “what now?”

-X-

“Sir.” Lupa swung open Director Grace’s door. He looked up in irritation, trying not to aggravate the pounding headache he had. After the disaster the night before, he’d gone out for a drink and woken up in bed with a pounding headache and no clue what had happened.

“The bodies were identified at impound, sir.”

“Anyone we know?” Grace asked drily. He needed another Advil, or maybe just the whole bottle. Actually, given how this whole mission was turning out, he might need something a lot stronger.

“One of the bodies was identified as Jason. Jason Grace.”

Director Grace’s hand was running over his forehead when he froze. “But . . . But he’s dead,” he protested weakly.

Lupa looked at him pityingly. “He definitely is now.”

-X-

They found a miniature buzz saw at an auto repair shop, though Annabeth couldn’t help thinking that Leo would have been able to MacGyver something in the hotel room.

Best not to think about that.

The lock took a few minutes to cut through. The whole time, she was worried that they were somehow going to damage whatever was inside the case.

She remembered a story Luke had told her years (had it really been years?) ago. There had been a lockpick trying to get into a safe, but it had defiantly stymied his every attempt to open it. He had finally gone ahead and used explosives to blow the door off. The door had come off, but the money inside had been burnt to a crisp. _The safe won_ , Luke had emphasized. _It’s not about opening the lock, it’s about getting past the lock to whatever’s inside. It’s not about opening the lock_.

“Got it!” Percy announced.

The inside of the suitcase was mostly shaped foam, and in the center lay five USB drives, numbered 1 through 5. Annabeth plugged the first one into a laptop they had picked up from an Apple store two blocks back.

It took three hours to get past the password protection, even with a few cheats Annabeth carried on a personal USB drive. By that point, Percy was snoring on the couch and Frank and Hazel were trying to make cup noodles taste good with different variations of some condiment pockets they had picked up from a Panda Express.

The first file on the drive was titled PROJECT JUPITER.

-X-

“So, we’ve finished the tests with the DNA samples our asset was able to send us.”

Conklin nodded impatiently. “And?” he demanded.

“We have complete matches for four people, along with the three that were killed in Tampa Bay. They came onto our radar a few years ago after they got involved with the Olympus terrorist organization.”

“I remember that. Wasn’t that Project Jupiter’s first major success?”

“Yes, sir. They successfully stopped a chemical attack on New York City. Now, two of the matches, Hazel Levesque and Frank Zhang, have largely incomplete files. We think they might have gotten training through the Jupiter program under Lupa in Rome, but besides that and the Olympus incident, we don’t really have anything else.”

“What about the other two?”

“Annabeth Chase and Perseus Jackson,” the deputy read carefully. “We have some more information on them. They were involved in Camp Orange and the KRONOS Project. The interesting thing about them, though, is that they are the only known escapees of Tartarus.”

-X-

MAINTAIN LOCATION UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS

The Professor managed to find a decent hotel room fairly easily. He picked up some supplies from the local CVS and managed to clean up a few of the scratches and bruises he had picked up before settling in to sleep.

He made sure to put all the locks into place in his door, along with a DO NOT DISTURB sign. He grabbed a blanket and the sheets from the bed and lay down in the bathtub. Maybe not the most comfortable spot, but infinitely preferable to being shot through the window by some enterprising sniper. After all, it wasn’t paranoia if there were people out to get you.

He was sleeping in seconds, though he would also be awake in seconds if need be. His phone was lying on the rim of the bathtub, waiting for the next step in his hunt.

The Professor slept.

-X-

“Its black ops files,” Annabeth explained.

The four of them were back around the table, trying to choke down the cup noodles Frank had finally handed out. So far, he was the only one happy with his concoction of soy sauce, ground peppers, and lemon juice, but no one was really in the mood to tell him so.

“On a guess,” Annabeth continued, “I’d say that one of their foreign offices in the area was breached and the directors at Langley were pulling out as much of the sensitive data as they could. Our employers, whoever the hell they are, must have wanted to steal the data, probably for blackmail.”

“How much stuff is on there?” Hazel asked with a frown.

“Even on the first drive, it’s a lot. There’s a ton of stuff about Project Jupiter, remember them? They were the guys we worked with when we were up against the Olympus group. Looks like they’ve been doing the same thing for a few years now.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Percy asked. “I mean, Gaea was pretty bad. If they’re trying to stop those guys, I wouldn’t mind working for them.”

“That’s the thing, it’s more than just terrorists. Jupiter hires mercenaries, contract killers, and private information dealers for the sake of American security. Like, here’s a file on a time they hired a Chinese triad to take out some government official who was trying to raise a tariff on the U.S. And here’s a time they kidnapped a U.S. citizen and used them as a hostage against a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.”

“Jesus,” Frank muttered.

The other three were silent as they digested the information. Percy even put his food down for a second.

“So . . . what do we do about it?” Frank asked.

Hazel snorted. “They killed our friends. What if we just send the drives to the _New York Times_ and stand back to watch the fireworks?”

Annabeth frowned. “The only problem with that is, what if they have information about us on one of the other drives?”

“That _would_ make it kind of impossible to run off afterwards,” Percy mused.

“Well, we can’t do nothing!” Hazel exclaimed as she jumped to her feet. “As far as we know, they murdered Leo, Piper, and Jason. We could blow them up right now with those drives!”

“But what do we do after that, Hazel?” Frank asked quietly.

Hazel scowled angrily but sat back down.

“I have an idea,” Annabeth finally spoke up. “But it’s pretty dangerous.”

Percy grinned. “Just pretty dangerous? Sounds like the best one we’ve had in a while.”

-X-

“This was during the Olympus incident,” the deputy was saying. “This is a pretty sensitive topic because we’re still not entirely sure what happened at Tartarus, so I’ll limit this to what we confirmed. We know that it was the principle testing site for the chemicals the group was developing and we know that they tested some of those on people. We’re fairly certain it was based in Afghanistan or Iraq, given the unstable nature of the region. We think that Chase and Jackson were captured by the group in Rome and ended up being sent to Tartarus. We do know that the five other members of their team organized a rescue effort, and their investigations are a large part of what we know about the prison now. The prison was shut down after the pair escaped and we think that all other prisoners were euthanized as a result. Because Project Jupiter helped with the rescue, we were able to do psych evals of Chase and Jackson, as well as some firsthand information about the prison. They didn’t tell us much except that two other prisoners, named Bob and Damasen, helped them escape.”

“Did we observe any major aftereffects from the imprisonment?” Conklin asked.

“Chemically, no. We think they escaped before any experimentation. Psychologically, they both had heavy measures of PTSD as a result, along with, we think survivor’s guilt. Bob and Damasen, apparently, died helping them escape.”

-X-

Lupa picked up the phone as soon as it began ringing, hoping for some good news. “Who is this?” she demanded, not recognizing the caller ID.

“This is Annabeth Chase. We need to talk.”


	7. Showdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohh, boy. Here we go . . .

**vi.**

“Mr. Conklin.”

“Parsons?”

“We got this through one of the deputies at the Jupiter program.”

“We’ll need to get him a job, after this is over.”

“Her, actually, sir. She said that Grace is going to buy the files from the team that stole them. The dropoff is tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Key West, Florida.”

-X-

The Professor was cleaning his gun. The SG 550 was on his bed in several pieces and he was running a wire swab over the firing mechanism. Downstairs he could hear someone playing on the piano in the lobby. He’d decided by then that if he were sent abroad, he would make his living as a freelance piano teacher. Very flexible schedules.

With his languages, he would probably be dispatched to Europe. Most likely in Spain or Portugal, possibly France, though they already had an asset there. The library in Richmond, Virginia crossed his mind for a second. He had known a librarian who had invited him to a few dinner dates and had looked interested in something more. The Professor had broken into his house after the first invitation to make sure that the man wasn’t a foreign operative. He had been a great fan of Proust and football, had had a rough coming-out to his parents – less so with his siblings, based on the photos on his wall – and was a steady Democratic voter with a collection of library books that he kept forgetting to return until a week after the limit. There had been no silenced pistols, no collections of poisons, and no passports with bundles of foreign currency, all of which the Professor had hidden in small drops throughout the city.

Quietly, the librarian and the library slipped from the Professor’s mind.

On the table, his phone buzzed.

EXCHANGE BETWEEN MARKS AND JUPITER IN KEY WEST

EXTRACT DATA FILES

CLEARANCE FOUR

The Professor let a puff of breath down the barrel of the rifle, letting it mist the metal momentarily, and ran a handkerchief around the circumference of the opening. He opened his golf bag to double-check the rounds, then shouldered the bag and walked out the door of the room.

He left nothing behind.

-X-

Annabeth had a plan, of course. She always did.

“So the way I see it, we can head down to the Everglades, then take a boat to the Bahamas. From there, we’ll just have to . . .”

_Split up_.

The words hung in the air.

Then Hazel just smiled. “Me and Frank will be fine,” she said. “We’ve always wanted to visit China. Now we actually have a chance.”

From behind her, Percy pressed a kiss into the back of Annabeth’s neck. Involuntarily, she felt herself relaxing, sinking into his warm body. “We’re doing this together, Wise Girl. Promise.”

-X-

“The situation, Director?”

“We’ll have the state police backing us up in this deal.”

“In plainclothes, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Did we mark the bills?”

“They said they would refuse to take any that were.”

“I’m assuming that the board told you that this was given strictly in the confidence that you would be returning this money immediately after the mission was completed.”

“. . . Yes.”

A sigh. “This is a gamble.”

Silence.

“Have you thought, sir, about what will happen if this mission fails?”

“I imagine I’ll have to actually spend time with my wife.”

“Hellish. Cigarette?”

“You know I tried to quit.”

“You never really quit smoking. You just take breaks in between.”

“I guess.” A pause. “Do you have a lighter?”

A small light flickers in the office, a cigarette ignites, a curl of smoke rises to the ceiling.

“Sort of like having kids, for you.”

The man draws for several long, painful seconds, filling his lungs with airborne cancer. He releases in a steady stream into the room. The woman across from him wrinkles her nose.

There is nothing to say.

“Will you take point?”

“Might as well.”

“Then I’ll be there, too.”

-X-

Hazel drowsily opened her eyes as the watch on her wrist buzzed irritatingly. Across the aisle of the subway train, which was blessedly empty this early, Annabeth had fallen asleep with the head tumbling into Percy’s shoulder. Percy was drooling lightly onto her forehead.

Beside her, Frank was gazing pensively out the window.

“Hey,” she whispered, touching him on the shoulder. “My turn to take watch.”

He started slightly at her fingers, then nodded and pulled up his hood. Hazel pulled the earbuds from her ears and passed them to him. For her, World War II-era jazz was the perfect tranquilizer. Frank preferred a weird blend of baroque piano music and traditional Chinese string music. Thank Jupiter and Juno and Apollo and probably Mercury or something for Spotify. Whichever one was the god of music.

“Do you know what the Roman god of music is?” Hazel asked suddenly.

If Frank was surprised by the sudden question, he didn’t show it. More likely, he was too sleepy to realize how weird it was. He was too tired these days. They all were.

“Think it was Apollo,” he muttered drowsily. “Don’t trust my memory, though. I only remember him ‘cause his name’s the same in Greek and Roman.” He shifted slightly to a more comfortable position, which to Hazel just looked like slouching, and grunted, “Grandma always told me about myths. We ran out of Chinese ones after a while, so she told me about the others, too.”

“And you paid attention?” Hazel asked incredulously.

“Well, it was better than listening to her talking about our family. Just made me feel like a failure, so I let her talk about the gods.”

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”

Both of them turned in surprise to see Annabeth blinking her eyes in annoyance. “Sorry. Got used to waking up easily in . . . Never mind.”

“Where was that from?” Hazel asked. Honestly, it was more politeness than actual interest. Anything to get Annabeth from thinking about Tartarus.

“King Lear. Shakespeare. No idea how I remembered that.” Annabeth’s eyes glanced up and she frowned. “Seaweed Brain, you’re drooling on me.”

-X-

They decided on a marketplace near the shoreline at 9 p.m. By then the sun would be going down, but at Saturday night it would still be crowded. Annabeth wanted earlier, but 9 p.m. was the absolute earliest they could arrive. Besides, a few hundred yards from the marketplace was an old, rusting shipping manufactory. Lots of space for Frank and Hazel to set up.

Both parties knew that if the team got cold feet, they could always run to the press.

As the sun began to set, a train, two black SUVs, and one motorcycle were approaching the city.

-X-

Lupa was waiting outside of the Starbucks, trying to enjoy her latte. She glanced down at her watch. 8:50.

At her elbow, a stainless steel suitcase was glinting red in the setting sun.

-X-

“How much time do you need?” Annabeth asked into the microphone.

“Give me fifteen minutes,” Frank replied. “We had to get past a few guards. Got held up a little bit.”

Annabeth shot a look at her boyfriend. He shrugged. “Fuck ‘em. They killed Jason, Leo, and Piper; they can wait a few minutes.”

She pulled the microphone to her mouth and looked out the office room they had broken into down into the marketplace below. “Take your time.”

-X-

Grace was swearing as the clock hit 9:00. “They’ve bailed,” he moaned. “Shit, shit, shit!”

Lupa took another sip. It tasted terrible. “Give them some time, sir. They’ve lost some friends. They’re probably having a little payback by making us sweat.”

She looked up at the sky. To the ocean, it had turned a bloody crimson, streaks of fire trailing through the sky and reflected in the ocean’s glassy, surprisingly placid surface. _Well_ , she thought, _it’s always calmest before the storm_. _Or something_.

She wondered if she would ever want to see a beach again if this mission went south. Probably not, all things considered. She didn’t have any family to visit with, besides a few nephews and nieces she hadn’t seen in years. Actually, she might have grandnephews and grandnieces by now.

As she always did when she began to go down this train of thought, she resolutely brought it to a halt and pushed into the recesses of her mind. The mission would succeed because the mission _had_ to succeed.

She sipped again. Still terrible.

-X-

It was 9:15 by the time Frank said, “We’re good to go.”

“All right,” Annabeth said, looking down into the street again. “Can you see the Starbucks?”

“Yup. Aiming at the mermaid as we speak.”

“Do you see the contact?”

“I see a middle-aged woman sitting by herself. No one’s talking to her. Got a weird metal briefcase by her. She hasn’t taken a hand off of it so far.”

“That’s her. Cover us.”

Annabeth took her finger off her communicator and turned to Percy. She nodded.

It took them less than a minute to walk down into the street. They headed past a few shops as they stepped down the sidewalk. One of them was advertising baby clothes.

At the end, sitting by a railing that overlooked the bay, an older woman was sitting at a table outside, looking like she was thoroughly sick of her drink. They each pulled up a chair and sat down across from her. If she was surprised at all from their sudden appearance, nothing showed on her face except mild annoyance.

“Annabeth,” Frank hissed, “we have at least three plainclothes around you guys.”

“We assumed that you would come alone,” Annabeth pointedly said.

“Dangerous things, assumptions.” The woman threw her drink over the railing into the wharf. She pulled the case onto the table. “I think you have something of ours.”

Annabeth dropped her own case onto the table. The woman clucked her tongue and a jogger who had so far been reading a magazine outside the Starbucks put it down and walked over to their table. Beside her, Annabeth could feel Percy tensing for a fight. The man snatched up the case and headed into the crowd.

“Just a precaution before you take the money,” the woman explained congenially. “We wouldn’t want to get ripped off, after all. It should only take a second.”

“I’ll save you that second,” Annabeth replied coldly. “There’s only one drive in there. The other four are in the city, connected to a computer and a receiver, ready to email their contents to every major newspaper in the U.S. That receiver, by the way, is connected to this.” She held up a small phone.

To her credit, the woman didn’t blink, just sighed as if dealing with unruly schoolchildren. Annabeth could practically feel Percy twitching angrily at her tone. “Such a shame you don’t trust us.”

“We can give you the address,” Annabeth stated, trying to remain as icy as possible, “but we’ll need the money first.”

“Impossible,” the woman said immediately. “You’ll get the money once we get our drives. End of story.”

“You got a nice project there, you know,” Percy interjected. “Shame if something were to happen to it.”

The two woman turned as one to stare at him until Percy started pulling at the collar of his shirt awkwardly. “Ignore him,” Annabeth muttered. “Look, we’ll pick up the money. I’ll write an address on this napkin. We’ll walk away, you’ll open the napkin, everyone goes home. Deal?”

The woman was silent for nearly a minute, during which Annabeth got the impression that she was listening to an impressively loud argument in her earbud. Finally, her eyes focused on Annabeth.

“Deal.”

-X-

“Director Conklin? Asset has arrived.”

-X-

Percy grabbed the suitcase and went into the Starbucks, where he would lock himself in the bathroom and check the money. That left Annabeth sitting at the table, awkwardly trying to look normal in the case of suspicious passerby, though with the sun setting the number of people in the marketplace was rapidly dwindling.

“You got a pen.”

-X-

The Professor headed up to the second floor of one of the office buildings around the marketplace. Pulling the telescopic sight for his rifle from his pocket, he was able to see everything happening below him in perfect detail.

As he watched, the young woman (Annabeth Chase, his mind supplied) was writing an address down on her napkin in ink.

-X-

As she watched, Jackson came out of the Starbucks and nodded at Chase. The girl took the napkin she had in her hands and passed it to Lupa. “Nice doing business with you,” she said as she walked off with Jackson.

Lupa hurriedly pulled open the napkin and began reading into her microphone, trying to hide the tremor in her voice.

“It’s less than a minute away,” Grace said in obvious relief. “I’ll send an agent right now.”

For a second the audio clicked off as he presumably screamed at every agent in the room to get off their ass and out to get back the drives. Lupa sat and watched Chase and Jackson slowly walking down the railing, looking for all the world like a couple out on a walk. She wondered where they would be heading next, how far out they had planned.

Suddenly, Lupa wanted a drink, even if it was as shitty as the Starbucks brewed. She abruptly stood up and walked into the shop. There was only one other person there. The sun had practically vanished beyond the horizon by now and most sane people were at home enjoying their Saturday night. For an irrational second, she felt sorry for the people working at this location at this hour.

She was about to place here order when Grace’s swearing filled her ear. “It’s not there!” he practically screamed. “ _It’s not there!_ ”

-X-

They had just left the marketplace when Annabeth heard the footsteps pounding behind them. The two of them spun around and were reaching into their jackets when the first agent jerked like a puppet whose string had been cut and fell to the ground. The second and third fell seconds afterwards before they really had a chance to figure out what was going on. Further off, the older woman watched in shock before her head snapped back and she, too, collapsed.

“Good old Frank,” Percy muttered as they set off down the street at a sprint.

Annabeth clicked on her communicator. “Thanks,” she panted out as they rounded a bend and crossed an empty street.

“Not a problem,” Frank grunted. “We’ll watch you until you get to the manufactory. Got the money?”

“Yes,” Annabeth replied.

“Great. Looks like we’re good to -”

From Frank’s end, Annabeth heard the unmistakable sound of a gunshot.

“Hazel?” he called out. “ _HAZEL!_ ”

The audio cut off. Annabeth and Percy looked at each other. They could run, obviously. Cut and run, make it to another port and get the hell out of the country until they could find proper identities. That would be the smartest choice at the moment. That would be the wisest, most rational choice.

Or they could run straight into the unknown on the slim chance that their friends might be alive.

It was never really a choice at all.

-X-

The Professor stopped at the top of the stairs. He pulled a handkerchief from an inner pocket of his coat and used it to wipe the soles of his shoes quickly. Wouldn’t be good to be leaving a trail of bloody footsteps.

Above him, he could hear a slight tapping. Someone walking down, likely to check on the gunshot. The tapping slowly drew closer to him, heading towards the stairwell. From the sound, probably a big man. The Professor slowly pulled the barrel of his rifle so that it was pointing vertically, directly upwards.

As soon as the tapping was directly above him, he fired one, two, three times.

The tapping stopped.

He slowly began stepping around the hard corner of the stairwell, keeping his rifle pressed to his body with the barrel pointing in front of him.

Before he had rounded the turn, he was hit by the bulk of a man built like a football linebacker. A pair of strong hands grabbed his shoulders and threw him down the stairs. He instinctively crouched into a ball as he slammed into the corrugated metal of the stairs and crashed onto the fifth floor. Somewhere along the way, he lost his grip on his rifle.

He reached into his boot and grabbed a switchblade. He flicked open the lock and lunged out with it, bringing it up in a long, slashing arc as he jumped to his feet. The linebacker jumped backwards, just dodging the curved edge of the knife. _Name,_ the Professor wondered and thought back. _Frank Zhang_. _Sniper_.

They circled each other warily for an instant, eyeing each other’s motions. The Professor jabbed with his knife experimentally once, looking for a reaction. He watched Zhang’s dart downwards for a second and realized that they had reversed positions, leaving him with his back to the stairwell. Meaning that Zhang could see the bloody footprints that he had left walking up.

The man gave an incoherent roar and suddenly charged at him like a bull that had been poked with a sword too many times. He slammed into him and wrapped his arms around his midsection, lifting him half a foot into the air as his momentum carried him forward and they fell down the stairs. The pair crashed onto the floor of the platform between fourth and fifth floor, with stairs leading up on the right and down on the left. Hurriedly, the Professor drove his blade into Zhang’s back up to the hilt.

This just made the man angrier. He threw the Professor at the sides of the stairway down, causing his lower back to explode as he slammed into the metal handrail. He tripped down the last few steps, finally finding his footing and staggering to a stop at the base.

A dozen steps above him, Zhang reached around to his back and slowly drew out the switchblade. As he began marching down with the knife in his hands, the Professor’s fingers began scrabbling at his tie, quickly pulling it off.

Zhang marched forwards without any hint of hesitation. He swung once with his knife, forcing the Professor to step backwards. A second swing, a second step back. On the third swing, the Professor lunged forward with his tie, whose ends he had wrapped around his hands. He caught Zhang’s right hand in the length of the cloth, then yanked it downwards while kicking his knee at the handle of the knife, sending the knife spiraling through the air.

Zhang suddenly grabbed the middle of the tie with both hands and swung his whole body down to the left, flinging the Professor to the ground. His head smashed into the metal floor, sending stars flying before his eyes. He pressed his hands to the ground, pushing himself up.

Zhang’s foot crashed into the side of his head, sending a tooth flying into the opposite end of his mouth. He collapsed, spat a mouthful of blood and phlegm onto the floor.

A hand grabbed the back of his collar and pulled him to a kneeling position. He felt something cool pass around the front of his neck; he saw it was a length of chain as his eyes began to refocus themselves. Then the chain began to pull.

Zhang had stepped around to the Professor’s back so that their backs were facing each other, then placed the chain before the front of his neck so that he could pull forward and slowly choke the life out of his enemy.

The Professor’s legs began to kick as he felt his feet leave the ground from the strain Zhang was applying to the ends of chain. Both of his hands were desperately scrambling with the chain at his neck. The index finger of his right hand slowly pushed its way between his throat and the chain, until he could quietly gasp a small measure of air into his lungs.

Then he slowly let his body go limp. His legs began to kick with less and less vigor. His right arm fell to his side, and his feet stopped moving entirely.

Behind him, Zhang was whispering something in Chinese. The man dropped the Professor to the ground. His left hand desperately felt the ground for any tools. They felt a slight rounded end of wood. His fingers reached past the wood and a sharp pain burst in his thumb, followed by the feeling of a small drop of blood running down his hand.

Zhang sounded like he was trying not to cry. The Professor knew that from this angle, he would see the girl’s body lying against the wall.

In that instant of distraction, the Professor threw his arm backwards and rammed the blade into the side of Zhang’s knee. As soon as the man crumpled, the Professor leapt forward and wrapped his right arm around Zhang’s head. With his other hand, he gripped the handle of his knife and dragged the blade across his neck.

-X-

They stopped at the fence and pressed themselves against a small outhouse. Peering through the windows, Annabeth could see a few streaks of light slicing through the darkness as men with flashlights hunted through the building.

The pressed onwards, quickly climbing over the fence. At one point, Percy got the edge of his jeans caught in the slightly jagged metal at the top and Annabeth was sure that they would hear the quiet ripping of fabric, but no one came.

They stepped as quietly as possible up to the closest window, which had grown opaque and dusty from years of rain and wind. Annabeth’s eyes met Percy’s. “Together?” she whispered.

“Together,” he said. He didn’t say it out loud, but his voice said _no duh, Wise Girl_. Then he leaned forward and pecked her on the lips.

They stepped back from the window and Percy raised his handgun. Aimed. Fired and blew the glass open into the building.

The two of them jumped forward through the new opening, hit the ground, rolled as bullets flew inches above them, and then came up guns blazing.

It was instinctive, fighting alongside Percy. Sometimes she wondered how she lived without him, her other half. She definitely had no idea how he functioned without her.

She got the first shot in, dropping a man who has just raising his rifle at them. _Five_ , she counted as she raised her gun. She pulled the trigger. _Four._

Behind her, Percy grabbed her by the back of the neck and they rolled to the ground as the remaining glass behind them exploded into splinters.

Percy jumped to his feet, shooting three times and hitting twice. _Three_. _Two_.

Annabeth staggered to her feet and pointed her gun at Percy. She aimed quickly, and shot the last agent over Percy’s shoulder. He never even flinched. _Clear_.

-X-

“Director Grace?”

“Yes?”

“We’ve lost contact with the MPs in the building, sir.”

A knuckle rapped against the hard plastic of a car dashboard. _Tap tap tap._

“Sir?”

“Clear out. Pull everyone back in. We’re done here.” The man nodded to himself, coming to terms with that realization. “We’re done,” he repeated.

-X-

Hazel was staring at them sightlessly from across the room. If Annabeth didn’t look too hard, she could have thought that Hazel was just resting against the wall for a moment, just taking a seat to rest. If she ignored the red sprayed across the wall behind her.

On the fourth floor, specks of blood covered the metal ground. Near the middle of the room, there was a massive pool of blood that was beginning to dry at the edges. Beside it, Frank was gazing up at the ceiling with one of his hands still locked around the red gash the opened lengthwise across the front of his throat.

They stood silently, listening to the slight whistle of wind working its way through the cracks in the building. Percy’s hand reached out and grabbed Annabeth’s squeezing it so tightly it hurt. “Annabeth,” he whispered, “Annabeth, we need to -”

There was a crack, a metallic explosion, and the glass window behind them shattered. Annabeth shoved Percy and herself behind a pillar for cover. Another bullet smashed into the side of the pillar, sending sparks flying. She glanced at the cracked window. _Missed,_ she thought with relief.

Beside her, Percy slumped to the ground. His hand touched his shirt as if in confusion and came away stained crimson. “Must have gone right through me,” he muttered.

They locked eyes with each other.

“No.”

“Annabeth, please, you can still -”

“No.” She was shaking her head now. “No!”

“Annabeth . . .” His tone was pleading.

She grabbed him by the shirt and shut him up with a kiss. They stood like that for longer than they should have, tasting each other for the last time.

When they finally broke apart, Annabeth grabbed the side of Percy’s head and looked into his eyes. “You fell for me once.”

Beside them, the wind was beginning to whistle through the cracked window.

“Annabeth . . .”

“You promised me that we would be together. Always.”

“Please . . .”

“You’re not getting away from me that easily.”

Percy finally shut up, just looked at her like a puppy she had just kicked.

“After Tartarus,” she choked, and suddenly there were tears on her cheeks and she couldn’t talk properly. She heaved a breath. “You said you couldn’t live without me.”

Percy was crying, too. They started walking sideways, until their lower legs bumped into steel. Their shoulders bumped into nothing. It was four stories straight down.

The gunshots had stopped.

“Together,” Percy promised.

They fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> . . .  
>  So, yeah.  
> Any comments? Ideas? Too much? Anything?


	8. Epilogue

**vii.**

“In the words of one of the last honest novelists of our profession, ‘Intelligence work has one moral law – it is justified by results.’ In spite of the directions of Director Grace, Alexander Conklin’s Treadstone program has produced those results. In reviewing this, and other operations carried out by the program in the past, the Executive Office has decided to give the program full access to the funds and resources requested at the last quarterly requisitions. . .

“The Jupiter Program, after extensive review by the Directorate of Operations, has been discontinued. All assets are to be turned over to the Central Liaisons Office, except for those which have been earmarked for use by Treadstone. The Directorate of Operations will oversee the transfer of all personnel to new offices, with the exception of the twelve operatives who will be retiring with full honors. . .”

-X-

Grace knew that he was done when he received a Congressional Medal of Honor. Privately, of course, since a public ceremony would have invited media scrutiny. You only got one of these medals if someone wanted to make a statement about your reliability or if you were deeply buried enough that no one would worry about the shit coming back to them. In that case, something as alien as pity might even work its way into Congress.

He put that into a small cardboard box that was sitting on his desk. To be honest, he would rather that he had gotten to keep the desk. It was a nice, sturdy piece of hand-worked oak that had been sitting here when he had first gotten his job. He wondered if it would still be there after his successor left. He ripped off a strip of duct tape and sealed the box. Outside, a few janitors had already stripped Lupa’s desk of all personal effects, which were going to be mailed to her closest relatives after Support made sure that there was nothing that represented a national security concern.

It occurred to him that he had never gotten to know her family. He might as well look them up, he decided. He had time now. Not today, though. Today he just wanted to go home and sleep for twenty-four straight hours, then wake up and find out that this week had never happened. A man could hope, after all.

He made one last stop before he left.

Conklin ( _Director_ Conklin, now) looked up when Grace stepped into his office. “Can I help you?” he asked. He already looked like the workload was beginning to get to him, with mussy hair and a suit that looked like he had been wearing it for a week. His eyes, however, were as sharp and alert as ever.

“I just wanted to know something, off the record.”

“Oh?”

Grace took a deep breath. “You hired them, didn’t you? Through Octavian? You wanted to spill some milk on the floor so that you could wipe it up.”

Conklin shrugged. “Sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit.” It was even, calm. Grace didn’t know if he had any fire in him anymore. “Your asset was a step behind them from the start. You had intel on them before he even left Virginia. Well it worked, you bastard. It worked, so how about you just come clean to me?”

Conklin shook his head. “Sir, I think you need to get some rest. I’ve heard that years in this job can lead to paranoia.”

Grace glared over his glasses, spun on his heel, and marched out of the office.

Down at the lobby, he handed in his security card and badge. As he walked to the door, he stopped by the trash can and pulled a microphone out of his shirt.

It had always been a long shot.

He threw it in the garbage and pushed his way out the door to his car. The glass smoothly slid shut behind him.

-X-

When Nico di Angelo got the news, he locked himself in his room for two hours. Once his parents were asleep, he ditched his bodyguard and drove a motorcycle into downtown New York.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare opened the door to see him on her doorstep looking like Death himself had walked on his grave. “Hey, Nico!” she said brightly. “How’re things with Will -”

He cut her off by crashing into her chest and crying.

It took about fifteen minutes to explain while he sat in the doorway to her apartment and sobbed into her shirt. By the time it was over, Rachel was sobbing, too.

Eventually, they pulled themselves up and walked inside, where Rachel went looking for ice cream and place for them to sit down.

There was a man waiting for them in the art studio, the fingers of his right hand curled around the handle of a pistol.

The two of them froze when they saw him sitting there by one of Rachel’s easels. “I’m looking for someone,” he announced.

“Did you kill them?” Rachel whispered.

The man tilted his head when he looked at her. “The Seven?”

She nodded slowly. She knew the answer by now, but somehow, she needed the words that would make it real. If only to know that she hated him.

“Yes.”

Rachel began nodding a bit more vigorously. “I see.”          

“As I was saying -”

“Get out.”

“I have reason to believe -”

“Get out!”

He stared at her silently over through his glasses. He didn’t look angry or annoyed or even amused. He just looked at her.

“Do you know Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano?”

Rachel shook her head resolutely. “Never heard of her.”

They watched each other silently, Rachel challenging him with her eyes to call her out on her lie.

“Why do you need her?” Nico snarled.

“Some loose ends,” the man said without inflection. When neither of them did anything but glare at him, he stood up. “Good night,” he said politely, and walked out of her apartment as if he had been visiting two old friends.

Rachel and Nico were watching the door long after he had gone, as if expecting him to burst in and kill someone. Finally, Rachel led him to a bean bag and handed him a spoon. She broke open the carton of ice cream.

-X-

One of Rachel’s older paintings was hung by the window. It had been drawn entirely from memory, but still had almost all the details correct. There were seven young adults standing side by side in the image, all in different stages of battered and bruised. Despite, this they were all smiling and laughing. Behind them, the Mediterranean was a brilliant azure as it sparkled in the sun.

They were all holding hands. They were all smiling. The sun was shining.

They were all smiling. They were happy.

 

FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And . . . action. That was the first fanfiction i've ever successfully finished and posted, so I would be incredibly grateful if any readers could give me some tips or suggestions on the writing or story. Otherwise, until next time (hopefully)!


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